Reading Comprehension (GMAT)

What is the purpose of the passage?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
A study of society starts with the human beings living together. In the process of human evolution, sociability seems a quality ingrained in human nature. Every individual has his own personality that belongs to him apart from every other individual, but the perpetuation and development of that personality is dependent on relations with other personalities and with the physical environment which limits his activity.
As an individual his primary interest is in self, but he finds by experience that he cannot survive in solitude. His impulses, his feelings, and his ideas are due to the relations that he has with that which is outside of himself. He may exercise choice, but it is within the limits set by these outside relations. He may make use of what they can do for him or he may antagonize them, at least he cannot ignore them.
How the individual may best adapt himself to his environment and adapt the environment to his own needs helps establish certain definite relationships. Any group of individuals, who have thus consciously established relationships with one another and with their social environment, is a society. The relationships through which the interplay of social forces is constantly going on make up the social organization. The readjustments of these relations for the better adaptation of one individual to another, or to his environment, make up the process of social development. A society which remains in equilibrium is termed static; that which is changing is called dynamic.

What message does the author seek to convey?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
But though it was Herbert Spencer who invested these arguments with their most systematic form, and gave them their definite place in the theory of evolution as a whole, they were widely diffused already among his immediate predecessors, as we may see by the following passage taken from an unlikely quarter. "It is," says Macaulay, in his Essay on Dryden, anticipating the exact phraseology of Spencer, "the age that makes the man, not the man that makes the age.... The inequalities of the intellect, like the inequalities of the surface of the globe, bear so small a proportion to the mass, that in calculating its great revolutions they may safely be neglected." And Macaulay is merely expressing a doctrine distinctive of his time — a doctrine which, to take one further example, dominated in a notable way the entire thought of Buckle. This doctrine, which, to a greater or less degree, merges the organism in its environment, or the individual, however great, in society, has been seized on by the more recent socialists just as the theory of Ricardo, with regard to labor and value, was seized on by Karl Marx, and has been adapted by them to their own purposes.

Which of the following will, most logically, be discussed next in the passage?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
Superstition gives us the freedom to connect everything, even things little known to us. People foresee their future in the planets, some dates are auspicious, some not. We fear these things because their effects, if there are any, are little known. We cannot peek into or relate much to the future; so we are superstitious about it.
If we cannot learn about a relationship, does that mean it does not exist? On seeing a tiger, our sight accepts its existence and on hearing its roar also the existence of tiger can be accepted. So we as human beings have a marked correlation mechanism. But our knowledge is limited. Whatever our sense of assessment of correlations, there can always be a new amazing insight in connection with the idea. We cannot say we have evolved with the perfect and satisfactory derivation, as all our knowing is also limited.
All Aristotelian, Newtonian works and physical theories divulge connections which were unimagined before their revelation. Such people developed new tools to establish connectivity and slowly developed a theory in the bargain.
So we can say, probably all superstitions could turn tomorrow’s science given the right treatment. Relationships of Earth with the moon, the sun, the planets were all based on superstitions in pre historic times but people worked on these superstitions and slowly a real relation based on science was derived.

The tone of the author is

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
Superstition gives us the freedom to connect everything, even things little known to us. People foresee their future in the planets, some dates are auspicious, some not. We fear these things because their effects, if there are any, are little known. We cannot peek into or relate much to the future; so we are superstitious about it.
If we cannot learn about a relationship, does that mean it does not exist? On seeing a tiger, our sight accepts its existence and on hearing its roar also the existence of tiger can be accepted. So we as human beings have a marked correlation mechanism. But our knowledge is limited. Whatever our sense of assessment of correlations, there can always be a new amazing insight in connection with the idea. We cannot say we have evolved with the perfect and satisfactory derivation, as all our knowing is also limited.
All Aristotelian, Newtonian works and physical theories divulge connections which were unimagined before their revelation. Such people developed new tools to establish connectivity and slowly developed a theory in the bargain.
So we can say, probably all superstitions could turn tomorrow’s science given the right treatment. Relationships of Earth with the moon, the sun, the planets were all based on superstitions in pre historic times but people worked on these superstitions and slowly a real relation based on science was derived.

Which of the following statements are true according to the passage?
I. Communism is better than capitalism as it is proving more robust.
II. The increasingly evident consensus is in favor of embracing communism.
III. A new system of economic governance is needed.

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
In a utopian world, communism might be the answer for all the economic ills of the world, though that assumption might and will be challenged by the advocates of various other types of economic systems. With many large, developed economies tottering on the edge of exhaustion, or having succumbed to the chimera of the infallibility of free enterprise, voices of a fallback to a more measured and balanced run towards economic prosperity are gaining strength around the world. The rise and rise of China as a global economic powerhouse is also providing food for thought to the citizenry of many nations who are struggling with failing banks, bankrupting corporations and ever increasing balance of payments deficit. China has a very centrally regulated economy, with everything being controlled by the Politburo, and there is not a great deal of transparency in the seemingly rosy economic picture. Where outflow of information is very tightly controlled by the State, it comes as a surprise that the nation is allowing news to filter out that it has been facing labor unrest over low wages and the ever widening gap between the rich, poor and the middle class. In a supposedly classless society it seems ironic that factory workers have to resort to strikes to press their demands for higher wages. What is even more surprising is that the State sponsored Unions, the only kind that are allowed to exist, and constituted to safeguard worker rights, are siding with the factory owners and exhorting the workers to call off their strikes and not push for higher wages.

What is the reason for China's seemingly rosy economic health?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
In a utopian world, communism might be the answer for all the economic ills of the world, though that assumption might and will be challenged by the advocates of various other types of economic systems. With many large, developed economies tottering on the edge of exhaustion, or having succumbed to the chimera of the infallibility of free enterprise, voices of a fallback to a more measured and balanced run towards economic prosperity are gaining strength around the world. The rise and rise of China as a global economic powerhouse is also providing food for thought to the citizenry of many nations who are struggling with failing banks, bankrupting corporations and ever increasing balance of payments deficit. China has a very centrally regulated economy, with everything being controlled by the Politburo, and there is not a great deal of transparency in the seemingly rosy economic picture. Where outflow of information is very tightly controlled by the State, it comes as a surprise that the nation is allowing news to filter out that it has been facing labor unrest over low wages and the ever widening gap between the rich, poor and the middle class. In a supposedly classless society it seems ironic that factory workers have to resort to strikes to press their demands for higher wages. What is even more surprising is that the State sponsored Unions, the only kind that are allowed to exist, and constituted to safeguard worker rights, are siding with the factory owners and exhorting the workers to call off their strikes and not push for higher wages.