Conservative:  Socialists begin their arguments with an analysis of history, from which they claim to derive certain ...

shunhe July 21, 2020

Hi @Alec,

Thanks for the question! So we’re being asked here to find something that would make the socialist’s statements conflict with the conservative’s view of history. This one isn’t super super important to diagram but a diagram can be useful for this one. Let’s take a look at what the socialist thinks.

Think outcome of history inevitable —> Wouldn’t work as hard to transform institutions of capitalist society
Transform institutions —> Understand institutions
Understand institutions —> Analyze history

Now let’s take a look at (E), which tells us that “because historical changes are mostly accidental, it is impossible for people to direct their efforts sensibly toward achieving large-scale changes in social conditions.” Well, if the conservative believes this, that puts the conservative in contrast with the socialist, right? Because the socialist does think that efforts toward large-scale changes in social conditions are possible. Transforming the institutions of capitalist society is indeed one of these large-scale changes in social conditions, and the socialists are directing their efforts towards that. The first sentence, which says “if we thought X, we wouldn’t do Y” implies that the socialist does do Y, and doesn’t think that X. So the socialist doesn’t think the outcome of history is inevitable, and works to transform the institutions of capitalist society. And that would be in direct contrast with (E), which is why (E) is the correct answer choice. So you aren’t really connecting logical chains for this problem, you’re showing that (D) just directly contrasts with the first sentence that the socialist is saying.

This question, just like all the questions assigned in the LSATMax course, now have detailed forward facing explanations that you can access when you “Review” your session. You will find unrivaled explanations written by our 99th-percentile instructors that include: (1) Argument or Facts, (2) Valid or Flawed, (3) Question Type, (4) Stimulus Summary, (5) Answer Anticipation, (6) Correct & Incorrect Answer Choice Explanations and (7) Key Takeaways. To ensure the optimal prep experience, please make sure you are taking advantage of these existing explanations before seeking further clarification on the message boards. 

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

mishraakri February 28, 2021

Initially, I had also diagrammed "we can only understand institutions by an analysis of their history" as Understand Institutions --> Analyze History (I thought of "We can only be in San Diego by being in California" = SD--> CA). But I changed it to Analyze history--> Understand institutions because I remembered in an earlier lesson we were told that the word "only" by itself always introduces a necessary condition. Why doesn't that rule apply here?