The radical spirit is rather that of John Stuart Mill, when he said, "When the object is to raise the permanent condition of a people, small means do not merely produce small effects; they produce no effect at all." Some political standard and quantitative measure is as necessary to social progress as similar standards are necessary in other relations.
If the political standard of the Socialists is so low as to regard social reform programs which on the whole are more helpful to the capitalists than to other classes--and therefore "produce no effect at all" as far as the Socialist purpose is concerned--as if they were _concessions_, then it follows naturally that the Socialists will be ready to pay a price for such concessions.

They will not only view as a relative gain over the capitalists measures which are primarily aimed at advancing capitalist interests, but they will inevitably be ready at a price to relax to some extent the intensity of their opposition to other measures that are capitalistic and antipopular.

For instance, if old age pensions are considered by the workers to be an epoch-making reform and a concession, they may be granted by the capitalists all the more readily.

But if thus overvalued, advantage will be taken of this feeling, and they will in all probability be accompanied by restrictions of the rights of labor organizations.

On the other hand, if such pensions, however desirable, are considered as a reform which will result indirectly in great savings to the capitalist classes, to public and private charitable institutions, to employers, etc., then the Socialists will accept them and, if possible, hasten their enactment,--but, like the French, will refuse to pay for them out of their own pockets (even through indirect taxation, as the British workingmen were forced to do) and will allow them neither to be used as a cloak for reaction, nor as a substitute for more fundamental reforms.
In other words, a rational political standard would teach that a certain measure of political progress is normal in capitalist society as a result of the general increase of wealth and the general improvement in political and economic organization, especially now that the great change to State capitalism is taking place; while reforms of an entirely different character are needed if there is to be any relative advance of the political and economic power of the masses, any tendency that might lead in the course of a reasonable period of time to economic and social democracy.
"A new and fair division of the goods and rights of this world should be the main object of all those who conduct human affairs," said De Tocqueville.