Cripple. History Major. Irritable and in constant pain. Vaguely Left-Wing.

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Cake day: July 21st, 2023

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  • Explanation: In 1956, socialist revolutionaries performed an uprising across Hungary, demanding workers’ control of production and a return to genuine democratic elections. The Soviet Union, unwilling to let go of a vassal state, and certainly not a dangerous one trying to show that actual democracy and socialism were compatible, invaded, rolling tanks into the major cities of Hungary and suppressing and executing dissidents as they saw fit.

    From this ugly incident we get the word ‘tankie’, coined by Western Communists who were previously largely content, even during the Stalinist years, to accept the argument that much of the bad press was capitalist propaganda. Apparently, seeing an independent socialist state created by workers’ agitation crushed by Soviet tanks was enough to finally shake that saintly sheen off the Soviet project.



  • Explanation: In 1956, socialist revolutionaries performed an uprising across Hungary, demanding workers’ control of production and a return to genuine democratic elections. The Soviet Union, unwilling to let go of a vassal state, and certainly not a dangerous one trying to show that actual democracy and socialism were compatible, invaded, rolling tanks into the major cities of Hungary and suppressing and executing dissidents as they saw fit.

    From this ugly incident we get the word ‘tankie’, coined by Western Communists who were previously largely content, even during the Stalinist years, to accept the argument that much of the bad press was capitalist propaganda. Apparently, seeing an independent socialist state created by workers’ agitation crushed by Soviet tanks was enough to finally shake that saintly sheen off the Soviet project.




  • Not strictly speaking - market economies, even under predominantly capitalist systems, still include a large number of workers’ coops and sole-proprietor firms. Markets predate capitalism, and markets will likely post-date it too.

    Capitalism is in reference to systems of limited-liability stock corporations which allow extremely fluid (and divided) ownership of capital by an investor class.


    1. Coffee as a luxury is uh, pretty fucking far. Do you know how cheap store-brand coffee is? The only way you’re dropping below that for the price of drinking is literal tap water - which, even in places where it’s safe, often has a distinct taste (source: grew up in a town where the tap water tasted of iron - city said it was fine, but it instilled a reluctance to drink from the tap).

    2. Lacking goods and services regarded as ordinary is a form of suffering - running water in a home is not a necessity either, but most would regard being without it as a form of suffering. Running water is a luxury - and one which we can easily provide.

    3. Disabled folk are often receiving benefits on the basis of being disabled, ie that they cannot reasonably and consistently earn more than that in their lifetime. If your view is that disabled folk should lack luxuries entirely because they dared to be born disabled, that’s fucked up.





  • At the same time that doesn’t give carte blanche for any word to mean anything. I could start using the word ‘conservative’ to mean ‘socialist’, but it would be ridiculous for me to attempt to force others to maintain that same usage, or even force them to acknowledge the usage’s validity. The fluidity of language is not an argument for absolutist individualist interpretations of language, which is nothing less than an argument for the ultimate incoherence of language. Language changes with mass usage, not automatically with individual usage.

    Language is a form of communication first, and ornamentation second, not vice-versa.