Conservative: Socialists begin their arguments with an analysis of his

Competition Mode Question

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 in retrospect does inevitability appear, for history 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 an analysis of their history. This is why historical analysis is important in socialist argument.

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


(A) it would have been impossible for anyone to predict a significant period beforehand that the institutions of capitalist society would take the form that they actually took

(B) the apparent inevitability of historical change is deceptive; all historical events could have occurred otherwise than they actually did

(C) in the past, radical changes in social structures have mostly resulted in a deterioration of social conditions

(D) since socialism cannot arise by accident or contingency, it can only arise as a result of individual struggle

(E) because historical changes are mostly accidental, it is impossible for people to direct their efforts sensibly toward achieving large-scale changes in social conditions