One of my favourite poems is Ulm 1592, by Bertolt Brecht. It is based on the story of Albert Ludwig Berblinger, who in 1811 attempted to demonstrate the possibility of human flight. I’m not really sure why Brecht situated the event in 1592, or had the subject die in his attempt; however, poets are certainly allowed poetic licence.

In reality, Berblinger survived his attempt, but he failed to demonstrate the possibility of human flight. Interestingly, Berblinger had proposed to demonstrate his invention from Ulm Minster, the tallest church in the world, from 100 metres up. However, he was not allowed to do so by the local authorities, and instead was restricted to a 13-metre-high bastion on the banks of the Danube, where he constructed a 20-metre scaffold.

Berblinger expressed concerns about the location, noting both the considerably shorter launch pad, and that the river and cold stone wall meant he would not encounter any updrafts. Bearing in mind these problems, he asked to reschedule the demonstration under better wind conditions or an alternative site. In the midst of pleading his case, a policeman took the initiative to shove him off the platform — further reducing his chances by removing even the possibility of a running start. Predictably, he failed to fly and promptly fell into the Danube to be rescued by fishers. His reputation ruined, Berblinger died years later in poverty.

Interestingly, in 1986 scientists reconstructed a replica of Berblinger’s apparatus, and proved that it was, actually, quite capable of flight — albeit more in the sense of a glider than a proper flying machine. This research also proved that it was impossible for even modern gliders to fly over the Danube in the conditions that Berblinger was restricted to. As we well know today, humans have since worked out the mechanics of flight.

Berblinger was not the first, nor the last, to attempt human flight. As a species we have many examples of such attempts, even dating back to our mythological past with the story of Icarus, who failed to heed his father’s advice and flew too close to the Sun — causing the wax holding his wings together to melt, and leading to his fatal plunge into the sea below. As an aside, while the tale of Icarus is often seen as a cautionary tale against being too ambitious, it was also a cautionary tale against being too cautious as well — Icarus’s father warned him equally about flying too low to the sea, as the wings on the feathers would get wet, causing them to fail, and equally lead to drowning in the sea.

Apart from an amusing story and some morality tale, what is the relevance of this story?

It is simply that just because something was considered impossible, and that all previous attempts to realise it ended in failure, it doesn’t mean that the idea itself was impossible. It simply meant that one had to learn from failure. As the saying goes, you miss all the shots you don’t take. However, in taking shots, one learns from the doing until one perfects it. Practice makes perfect, in essence. Had humanity decided that the failures to achieve flight meant that it was impossible and simply given up, well, where would we be today?

This message, of learning from mistakes and not giving up on a dream, of making the impossible possible, is a valuable lesson for all of us, and one that we should all take inspiration from.

Clearly, inasmuch as I’m writing this as part of a series to my previous articles on rethinking democracy, I am seeking to apply these lessons to the historical struggle for democracy and human freedom. Yes, attempts to realise a better world have failed so far, be it the more revolutionary aspects of the anti-feudal struggle — most clearly demonstrated by the German Peasants War of 1524-25 — the Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian Revolution of 1917, the German Revolution of 1918, the Red Clydeside of 1919, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the 1968 revolutions or the post-2008 revolutionary movements.

Does this mean we should simply shrug our collective shoulders and conclude that there is no alternative to the status quo? Of course not. What it does mean is that we should learn the lessons of those failures — to what extent were they owing to external factors such as those that plagued Berblinger, or to what extent were they because of internal factors?

One can also draw inspiration from the history of capitalism itself. While we may think that capitalism has always existed — and there are certainly those who will twist the definition of capitalism to suit their needs for this — in reality it has not existed as a dominant socioeconomic system until relatively recently. The exact dating of capitalism’s dominance is debated; however, we can roughly say that the feudal system began to transition into capitalism through a transitional stage of mercantilism from roughly 1492, with the capitalist revolution of the English Civil War more or less marking the point at which feudalism was definitively in retreat.

However, there were capitalist tendencies, prefigurations, long before 1492. The anti-feudal struggle certainly saw such capitalist attempts. In a sense, one could even describe the birth of capitalism as essentially a counter-revolution against the more radical aspects of the anti-feudal struggle, as the Italian feminist Silvia Federici has brilliantly outlined. Similarly, Michael Tigar, a scholar of capitalist law, has demonstrated capitalist prefigurative attempts as early as 1184, when capitalist revolutionaries briefly took power in the French town of Châteauneuf.

In short, capitalism took some four centuries to overcome feudalism — and many of its early attempts were terrible failures or authoritarian regimes, relying on brutal force to both maintain control and develop wealth sufficient to defeat feudal rivals.

Indeed, the genocide of the Americas and the enslavement of Africans in the Americas played a key role in not just the genesis of Whiteness, but capitalism as a whole. As such, we should not expect the alternative to capitalism to emerge fully successful right away, nor adopt a defeatist attitude based on obvious failures. What we should do, however, is to learn from the failures of the past and apply them to the present.

• Jonathan Starling is a socialist writer with an MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from Heriot-Watt University