#12 - Conservative: Socialists begin their arguments with

[gen2871]

Hi Dear LSAT masters:

Need big help on this. I am completely lost on the stem. I simply dont even know what question type this is and what they are asking to answer this question.

My understanding of the analysis is as following:
Conservative: Socialists claim that analysis of history derive certain trends lead to inevitably to a socialist future, but there is no trends.
Socialist: if it were inevitable transform the institution to capitalist (because the sentence is in subjunctive mood, which means it is contrary to fact, so the socialist is implying outcome of the history is not inevitable, which means not indeterministic.
Transform the institution understand them via analysis of their history

Question 12 asks the socialist's statements imply a conflict with the conservative, I dont know what they mean by the conflict, is it the conflict between socialist and conservative? or a conflict within the conservative's argument. If it were former, there is already a conflict, and if latter, does make this question an assumption question? I am completely lost here. Please help. Thank you in advance!

[James Finch]

Hi Gen,

This question should be read as a Must Be True, albeit a unique one in which we must add a premise to one speaker's arguments (the conservative) in order to create a direct conflict with the second speaker's argument (the socialist), similar to a Justify question. In order to answer that question, we first have to see what is present in the socialist's argument, but not in the conservative's, and vice versa. The last sentence of the conservative's and the first sentence of the socialist's stimulus and the provides this: "history occurs through accident" vs. "working hard to transform society." So in order to attack the socialist's position, the conservative would have to make the accidental nature of history mean that working hard to transform society is pointless.

Answer choice (E) gives us that prephrased answer, and is correct.

Hope this clears things up!

[drocks]

I was having trouble with answer choice E because of the wording " because historical changes are MOSTLY accidental...". The Conservatives never said that it was mostly accidental, rather that "history occurs through accident, contingency, and individual struggle". Accident is one of the # of causes.

[Robert Carroll]

drocks,

The question does not require the conservative to have said that historical changes are mostly accidental. The question is saying a conflict would arise if the conservative thought something, and answer choice (E) is something that would entail a conflict. Because of the way the question is phrased, the conflict does not have to be entailed purely by what the conservative already said - the question tells you to supply what the answer choice says, and then consider whether there is now a conflict.

Robert Carroll

[yupyup]

I chose E, but I also was really considering B. Could someone please explain why B is wrong? Thanks!

[Claire Horan]

Hi yupyup,

The statement in B is basically that change is not inevitable. If you add this to the conservative comments that historical trends are not discernible in the day-to-day progress of history, it flows quite well. BUT, it doesn't create a conflict with the socialist's response that understanding history is a precursor to transforming it. E, in contrast, does create a conflict because it suggests that the transformation the socialist is talking about is impossible.

I hope this explanation helps!