Rules-reformism is the final stage of liberal cognitive dissonance to the horrors-of-the-empire bargaining stage in my experience.

They either recognize that these reforms are intentional structural impossibilities then logically actually move towards some form of anticapitalist thought or disengage entirely if they're privileged enough to shrug it off. I've struggled helping friends at this point make the final step. It's extremely difficult to achieve in the imperial core which can be incredibly disheartening.