Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Hard

PT14 S4 Q11 Explanation

Conservative: Socialists begin their arguments

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsAgree/Disagree

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Stimulus

Conservative: Socialists begin their arguments with an analysis of history, from which they claim to derive certain trends leading inevitably to a socialist future. But in the day‐to‐day progress of history there are never such discernible trends. Only occurs through accident, contingency, and individual struggle.

Socialist: If we thought the outcome of history were inevitable, we would not work so hard to transform the institutions of capitalist society. But to transform them we must first understand them, and we can only understand them by why historical analysis is important in socialist argument.

What this question is testing

Agree/Disagree

Your task

Break the argument into its conclusion and evidence, then do exactly what the question stem asks with that structure.

Common trap

Answers that sound relevant to the topic but don't connect to the argument's actual reasoning.

Winning move

Predict what a right answer must do, then test each choice against the conclusion-evidence gap.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
11.

In the dispute the issue between the socialist and the conservative can most accurately be

Answer choices

  1. Neither Agrees24% picked this

    a socialist society is the inevitable consequence of historical trends that can be identified by

    We wouldn't be able to derive agreement with this claim from either party. The 2nd speaker disavows the possibility of inevitability, so she disagrees. And the 1st speaker is only saying that socialists act like a socialist society is the inevitable consequence of their analysis of history. He doesn't believe that a socialist society is the inevitable consequence.

  2. Unsupported Person 11% picked this

    the institutions of capitalist society stand in need

    While Person 2 would agree with this, we can't derive from the Conservative's claims that he thinks that "the institutions of capitalist society do not need any transformation". He never even speaks on capitalism.

  3. Neither Agrees11% picked this

    socialists’ arguments for the inevitability of socialism

    We wouldn't be able to derive agreement with this claim from either party. The 2nd speaker disavows the possibility of inevitability, so she disagrees. And the 1st speaker is only saying that socialists act like their arguments are justified. He doesn't believe that their supposed arguments are justified. He pivots with a But in order to rebut the socialists' alleged point of view.

  4. Both Agree Extreme Disagree Position: impossible12% picked this

    it is possible for people by their own efforts to affect the

    Person 1 says that "history occurs through ... individual struggle" and Person 2 is talking about working hard to transform the institutions of capitalist society, so it seems like they both agree. We certainly couldn't derive the Disagree position from either paragraph, because that would be the extreme claim that "it is impossible for people by their own efforts to affect the course of history".

  5. Correct52% picked this

    socialists analyze history in order to support the view that socialism

    Why this is right

    As we anticipated, they are disagreeing over the Conservative's 2nd claim, that socialists look at history and claim to derive certain trends leading inevitability to a socialist future. So we can derive the Agree position from person 1. We can derive the Disagree position from person 2 because they imply that they don't believe that the outcome of history is inevitable, so thus they are not trying to support any view that socialism is inevitable. Instead, they are working hard to try to make socialism a reality.

    Skill tested: Agree/Disagree · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

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