Historical Profile Passage (grammar/writing)

The “D” stands for “Don’t read the passage first.” Unlike the Verbal Reasoning section, where you should read the passage before considering the questions, the Grammar/Writing section contains passages that, by definition, are full of errors needing correction. Reading the passage could lead to significant confusion; it’s better to let the underlined portions point you to where to read and then gather the information you need from the context.

The answer is D. This sentence structure question concerns a subordinate clause: a statement with subject and verb typically introduced by a word like “which” or “that”. A subordinate clause is not the main part of the sentence, but rather modifies it in some way. We have to look at the logical movement of the sentence, and especially the word “argue” right before our underlined word. It would be unusual to have the phrasing “argue how …” or “argue whether …” so choices A and C seem unlikely. You can certainly “argue for” something, but in that case, the object needs to occur next, as in the phrase “argue for a new approach.” This is not what we see here; rather, the word “if” starts yet another dependent clause indicating, in conditional fashion, what Marx is arguing. With another full clause beginning, we need the phrase “argue that” to lay the foundation for that clause. Once “argue that” is in place, the rest of the sentence follows with an “if … then” structure that could stand on its own if it were included as a separate sentence. This makes sense with “argue that”; following such phrasing, an entire suggestion or proposition makes sense.

If you need to be convinced yourself of this, imagine starting a sentence, “I would argue that …” and then finishing the sentence with anything that comes to mind. You’ll find that you are always including an entire statement or proposition after “argue that”.

The answer is A. Word choice questions demand that we pay attention to the context. The language is a bit challenging here, but one element is the phrase “to which”. Looking back further, we find that there is a “third thing” and two other things that somehow relate to that third thing. Rearranging the phrasing, we can summarize the idea as follows: Two things are _____ to a third thing. This helps us see that we need a word we can use with the preposition “to” as well as one that describes the relationship between the “two things” on the one hand and the “third thing” on the other. It would be awkward to say “reciprocated to”; the preposition doesn’t go well with “reciprocated”. Something can certainly be “referred to,” but does it make sense to say that two things are referred to a third thing? That doesn’t sound quite right.

So we are down to reducible and relegated. “Relegated to” is a common phrase; teams in the English Premier League, for example, can be “relegated to” lower leagues if they perform poorly. It’s hard to envision how that could work here, though; two things could be relegated to a lower level but not to a “third thing”. But two things can be reducible to a third thing if there is a way to collapse the two into the third thing or somehow summarize the two things by means of the third. It’s a difficult question, but reducible is best.

The answer is B. A consideration of the sentence structure surrounding this phrase helps us identify the necessary punctuation. We go back to the Clause Test: are there multiple complete clauses here? The sentence begins with “This then motivates the second stage …”, which is a clause that could stand on its own. But all the remaining clauses and phrases, including two clauses starting with “which”, depend on this first part of the sentence. So we can rule out answer choice D because of the semicolon. We need a comma here (not a colon; in some cases, we could put a colon after the word “stage”, but not right before the word “which”); which choice between A and B does it better? Reading the original, we see too many commas; there is no need for a comma after “which”, a word introducing a new clause. Answer choice B is best.

The answer is D. In some cases, a “rhetorical strength” question like this will present you with material irrelevant to the paragraph. But in this case, the proposed addition seems relevant to the discussion of this paragraph. The sentence following the place where we could insert this sentence refers to Marx’s “solution”. Does this sentence fit well before a “solution”? Indeed it does; it speaks of something “no previous theorist has been able adequately to explain.” That language begs for a solution. This sentence is not only relevant but also clearly non-contradictory to what follows, so choices A and B are eliminated. Choice C sounds good at first with “provides a transition,” but the content here has nothing to do with socialism, even though it is talking about capitalism. There is not a transition from one topic to another. Rather, a difficult question is posed, followed by the way Marx answers it. As choice D says, this part “sets up the following sentence.”

The answer is B. This is a tricky punctuation because, if you only read the phrase “ability to labor for the day,” it sounds as if no punctuation is necessary. But we have to pay attention to the em dash earlier in the sentence, after the phrase “labor power.” The dash there suggests that the author is going to define what is meant by “labor power.” Most naturally, the definition of this phrase is the worker’s “ability to labor,” not the worker’s “ability to labor for the day.” In other words, “labor power” is probably not limited to what the worker can do on one day. Additionally, if we look back further in the sentence, we can see what the phrase “for the day” is intended to modify; it is the length of time for which the capitalist purchases labor power. (The capitalist purchases the worker’s labor power for the day, then the next day that labor power is available for purchase again. This is what the broader context suggests.)

So if we need some punctuation here, which punctuation is best? The rule of thumb with em dashes is that one dash typically demands another to follow. (The exception is when the phrase set off by the first dash ends the sentence, so only a period is necessary.) So we need to choose the answer containing the dash. In sum, think of em dashes as functioning like parentheses, setting off material that explains or elaborates what came before in a way that the sentence could exist grammatically without the added information.

The answer is B. Before addressing the suitability of the colon in this sentence, let’s use the Clause Test to eliminate other answers. The part after the proposed punctuation reads as follows: in terms of the amount of socially necessary labor power required to produce it. Reading this part of the sentence on its own shows us that it could not stand on its own as an independent clause. According to the Clause Test, therefore, we must rule out choice A (semicolon) and choice C (period). What about choice D? A comma should work in the case of one clause being “incomplete” (dependent), but choice D adds the word “as”. There is no reason to add the word “as” and it reads awkwardly in the context of the whole sentence.

That leaves us with choice B, and a colon, being one of the flexible punctuation marks, is certainly permissible here. But a colon makes especially good sense because it is meant to introduce something that explains; put simply, a colon can be seen as announcing, “Here it is!” The sentence talks about the cost of a commodity being determined “the same way as any other,” which should prompt the reader to say, “Which way is that?” Well, here it is, the explanation that follows the colon explains.

The answer is C. The sentence before this underlined portion reads, “Suppose that such commodities take four hours to produce.” When someone says, “Suppose …” s/he is typically inviting the hearer into a situation which will then be explained. The “Suppose …” sentence mentions four hours of labor, as does the following sentence. This repetition affirms the basically agreeing relationship between the two sentences. We can eliminate choices A and D, as there is no contrast in meaning here.

To decide between choices B and C, it’s helpful to begin with the stronger, more specific wording and see if that choice can be eliminated. Choice B’s “as a result” suggests that there is cause and effect from one sentence to the next. The relationship between the two sentences is not one of cause and effect but rather of similarity or, we might say, of movement from general to specific. If we “suppose” this length of time to make a certain kind of commodity, the next sentence makes sense, offering a specific explanation of what this means in the context of Marx’s argument. “Accordingly” makes good sense.

The answer is C. We need to make two distinctions to answer this question. The first is between comparative (words like “more” or “less” or ending in “-er”) and superlative (words like “most” or “least” or ending in “-est”). Comparative words compare two things; superlative words compare three or more things. In this case, given the context offered by the previous sentence, the author is comparing two different amounts of capital. So we need a comparative word and can rule out choices A and B.

Do we want “less” or “fewer”? It all depends on whether the noun modified is a counting noun. For instance, “dollar” is a counting noun because we can say “one dollar,” “two dollars,” etc. “Money” is not a counting noun because we cannot say “one money,” “two money,” etc. With a non-counting noun like “capital” (which is what we have here), we need to use “less”. “Fewer” would indicate a noun we count as if there could be one, two, or three of that thing.

The answer is C. This is a challenging verb tense question. When asked about verb tense, we typically want to keep the tense consistent throughout the sentence in which it is found. But in this sentence, the previous verb is “will fall.” We would expect that to follow with “will lead,” but that choice is not offered to us. If the future tense is not an option, the general present tense often is best; the author may be talking about what is generally true in light of some prediction of the future. A past tense form won’t work, so we can rule out choices B and D (not to mention that choice D gives us a made-up form; “leaded” is in no way a past tense form of “lead”).

To decide between A and C, we need to consider another grammatical aspect that is present here: subject-verb agreement. It is difficult to say whether the subject of this verb is the pronoun “one” or the noun “factors”. It is true that the meaning of the sentence points to factors as the key idea, but for the grammar decision we must invoke the truism that a word in a prepositional phrase cannot serve as the subject of a verb. In the phrase, “A group of students,” the word group, not the word students, is the subject. Similarly, we need to look back to the pronoun “one” to find our subject here. The word “which” connects to the word “one”, and therefore the verb must be singular. One of the ironies of the English language is that singular verbs are the only present tense forms that use “s”, even though “s” is a plural marker for nouns. We want the word “leads”, as in, “it leads to the downfall of capitalism.”

The answer is D. This is a part of speech question; do we want a noun, an adjective, or an adjective? The underlined word is next to the word “false” and, together with that word, appears to be describing the pronoun “this”, so this doesn’t seem like the right place for a noun. Choice B is out. Choices A and C give us different options for adjectives; this is likely to mean we can eliminate them both! After all, there can’t be two right answers, can there? Further, we shouldn’t use an adjective here because the underlined word (which means “determined by observation or experimentation”) works well to modify “false”. As you’ve probably learned, an adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, so the adverbial form is what we want here: empirically.