<p>One question from the blue book reads: "In the past, the small nation had been committed to self-managed socialism, a system under which the workers, rather than the state, owns most enterprises."
I understand that "owns" should be "own" because it must agree with the subject, but why is "had been committed" correct? I'm confused because I thought past perfect was used to indicate when one action occurred before another? Thanks! </p>
<p>“Had been committed” is past perfect continuous, indicating that something started in the past and continued up until another time in the past. It’s different than the standard past perfect tense.</p>
<p>@Brackish </p>
<p>^^ For the record, “Had been committed” is not continuous. A continuous verb would be “Had been committing.” It’s probably best not even to think of “committed” as a verb here; instead, analyze it as an adjective, the same as you would in the sentence “I am committed.” (Many adjectives are formed out of a past participle.) Then you can think of “had been committed” as describing a continuous state, regardless of the actual tense.</p>
<p>But none of that answers the original question.</p>
<p>OP, you are overthinking this. In a typical sentence, the tense is chosen because of the way the verb fits into the larger context, which includes the surrounding sentences. In test questions like this, you are not given the larger context, so you have to make assumptions. If there is an internal contradiction related to tense, then certainly you’ve discovered an error. If not, look for something else.</p>
<p>I probably am! So if there’s no blatant error with the tense due to ambiguous context, then the tense cannot be wrong?</p>