Being a leftist in a field where the contradictions jump at you in real-time is quite a fever dream.

At the position I am in, you realize that the people who vehemently oppose socialism aren't ignorant but actively tuning out the thought that not everything in this system makes nearly any sense as it's "supposed to".

I love reading this thread

It does

"The technically precise description of America’s fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution. We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended."

They're saying we should "stop subsidizing poor women to have babies" ie cut social spending for poor single mothers

im not saying this is a socialist book btw im just saying there are clear examples throughout it of them saying they fear the upper class's intrinsic inability to understand or help the lower class and feel the IQ gap is the reason. it's not a defense of the position, it's a common misunderstanding of what the book is about

I know about this part already, but they literally advocate for cutting social spending for poor mothers because it would bring the populations iq down according to them

Which is just a policy of eugenics with extra steps

you're misreading it, the prior part of it literally says the issue is that they think only poor women are getting the services when it should be universal if it's offered

Bro no lmao

They're saying now only poor mothers are getting welfare

But it should be that nobody should get it

Which is cutting social welfare

This isn't my interpretation they literally just say it

Murray advocates for the abolition of social services/welfare while Herrnstein believes in universalization of them , they don't agree even in the context of the book itself

Everytime I ask for book recs this thread is USELESS

can't believe we're arguing about the mf bell curve im not even trying to defend the book

I’m Maoist gang bro I don’t be reading Xi and s*** like that lol

You can be maoist and be interested in post deng Chinese history

"We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended."

They say "we" urge, they don't have different opinions on this. Nowhere in the book does Herrnstein advocate for universalizing social welfare for mothers.

i mean even Mao advocated for reading reactionary literature and such how else your gonna steel your thoughts against them

Hernnstein died shortly before the book's publication but you can find articles on him saying he thinks social & legal works being dropped is a bad idea, and only wanted money cut to programs which were proven to not work, and instead wanted money to go toward experimental programs with higher success rates. I don't know what else he could have meant by "social works" besides social programs.

What's going on in Korea?

Vox comparing Murray & Marx

I agree with that and I have and do read a lot of reactionary literature. Recently got off a big Nick Land kick lol

I just think there’s more pressing things to be reading than Xi and have never taken the time to do so. I’ve heard the arguments for their brand of “socialism” a million times

You're interested in post Deng Chinese history?

D&G are interesting to me on how their “leftist” theories ended up influencing huge reactionaries like Nick Land and Capitalist news outlets like Buzzfeed, and even the f***ing IDF

he died the month it was relased, but all that doesn't matter anyway idc about defending herrnstein, the content of the book is pretty clear, whether murray quickly changed the text before publishing it before he died would be an interesting conspiracy but doesnt change what was eventually published, which is all i was talking abt anyway

I'm interested in post deng Chinese history

pre/post meth land?

Yeah most D&G is bullshit anti Marxism, but after reading a bit of them while I was doing a deep dive of accelerationism, I do find their concept of deterritorialization/reterritorialization to be really great and useful

Bit of both, mostly post. Was morbidly curious lol