If the search for historical precedents is extended more globally (an impossibly large task in this context, but worth a try), then the lessons are similarly mixed. Since the 1950s, several democratically elected socialist governments have nationalized large parts of their extractive sectors and begun to redistribute to the poor and middle class the wealth that had previously hemorrhaged into foreign bank accounts, most notably Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and Salvador Allende in Chile. But those experiments were interrupted by foreign-sponsored coups d’état before reaching their potential.
