ntly improved_. That is to say, present-day reforms
are not only of secondary importance, but that they are of merely
temporary effect.

"There is nothing more to hope from the property-holding classes."

"The bourgeois reformers are constantly getting less progressive and
allying themselves more and more with the reactionaries."

"It is impossible that the capitalists should accomplish any important
reform."

"With all social reform, short of Socialism itself, conditions cannot be
permanently improved."

These and many similar expressions are either quotations from well-known
Socialist authors or phrases in common use. Many French and German
Socialists have even called the whole "State Socialist" program
"social-demagogy." As none of the reforms proposed by the capitalists
are sufficient to balance the counteracting forces and to carry society
along their direction, Socialists sometimes mistakenly feel that
_nothing whatever of benefit_ can come to the workers from capitalist
government. As the capitalists' reforms all tend "to insure the
dominance of the capitalist class," it is denied that they can cure any
of the grave social evils now prevalent, and it is even asserted that
they are reactionary.

"For how many years have we been telling the workingman, especially the
trade unionist," wrote the late Benjamin Hanford, on two successive
occasions Socialist candidate for Vice President of the United States
"that it was folly for him to beg in the halls of a capitalist
legislature and a capitalist Congress? Did we mean what we said? I did,
for one.... I not only believed it--I proved it." Obviously there are
many political measures, just as _there are many improvements in
industry and industrial organization_, that may be beneficial to the
workers as well as the capitalists, but it is also clear that such
changes will in most instances be brought about by the capitalists
themselves. _On the other hand, even where they have a group of
independent legislators of their own_, however large a minority it may
form, the Socialists can expect no concessions of political or economic
power until social revolution is at hand.

The municipal platform adopted by the Socialist Party in New York City
in 1909 also appealed to workingmen not to be deluded into the belief
"that the capitalists will permit any measures of real benefit to the
working class to be carried into effect by the municipality so long as
they remain in und