Logical Reasoning

PT14 · S4 · Q12 Conservative: Socialists begin their arguments

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Conservative: Socialists begin their arguments with an analysis of history, from which they claim to derive certain trends leading inevitably to a socialist future.

Conservative's View of History

In the day-to-day progress of history there are never such discernible trends.

Only in retrospect does inevitability appear.

History occurs through accident, contingency, and individual struggle.

Socialist's Statements

We don't think the outcome of history is inevitable.

We hope to transform the institutions of capitalist society.

We can only understand the institutions of capitalist society by analyzing their history.

Evaluation / Goal

This is a very weird task. We're going to add another thought to the first paragraph, so that it somehow contradicts the second paragraph.

It seems hard to get ahead of this and guess what the correct answer is going to sound like, but if we're going to imply a conflict with what the socialist said, then we're going to want our answer choice to make it sound like

- the outcome of history is inevitable - you can't transform the institutions of capitalist society - you can understand the institutions of capitalist society without analyzing their history

12.

The socialist’s statements imply a conflict with the conservative’s view of history if the conservative also holds that

  1. it would have been impossible

    No Conflict

    This doesn't conflict with the socialist because she wasn't arguing that it was possible to predict how capitalist institutions would look in the future. She is only saying it's possible to understand the history behind capitalist institutions, thereby allowing us to understand capitalist institutions, and thereby allowing us to seek to transform them in the future.

    16% picked this

  2. the apparent inevitability of historical

    No Conflict

    This doesn't conflict with the socialist because the socialist implies that she doesn't think history is inevitable. She says, "If we thought it was inevitable, then we wouldn't act as we do (thus we don't think it's inevitable)." Since the socialist doesn't think history is actually inevitable, she could potentially agree to this statement that "the semblance of inevitability is an illusion".

    19% picked this

  3. in the past, radical changes

    No Conflict

    This doesn't conflict with the socialist because the socialist never said anything about radical changes. She may believe that most radical changes of social structures in the past resulted in a deterioration of social conditions.

    1% picked this

  4. since socialism cannot arise by

    No Conflict

    This doesn't conflict with the socialist because she never talked about what conditions do / don't allow for socialism to arise.

    4% picked this

  5. Correct

    because historical changes are mostly

    Why this is right

    This conflicts with the socialist, because she is saying that it's possible to understand the history behind capitalist institutions, thereby allowing us to understand capitalist institutions, and thereby allowing us to seek to transform them in the future. If it's impossible for people to direct their efforts sensibly toward achieving large-scale changes in social conditions, then that conflicts with the socialist's whole plan. She is hoping to understand how capitalist institutions arose so that she can work so hard to transform them. "Transforming capitalist institutions" is a match for "achieving large-scale changes in social conditions". In short, this answer makes it sound like the socialist's plan (to understand capitalism well enough to transform it) is an impossible task to carry out.

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

    60% picked this

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