Herman Gorter Quotes

There has been hardly a single year since 1917, and in a certain sense since 1905, without a revolution somewhere in the world in which the workers participated in a rather important way.

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.

Only idiots think that the proletariat will win a majority right away. First we topple the bourgeoisie. Then we seize power. That is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

A bourgeois-and-workers' revolution is a betrayal of the working class

Who, if not the revolutionary intelligentsia, could promote the political development of the working class?

The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.

Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism.

The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class.

As the class struggle sharpens in the U.S. Marxism will come into its own as a great popular study.

The revolution in Russia was victorious with the help of the poor peasants. This should always be borne in mind here in Western Europe and all the world over. But the workers in Western Europe stand alone: this should never be forgotten in Russia.

To you, workers of Ireland, we address ourselves. AGITATE in the workshop, in the field, in the factory, until you arouse your brothers to hatred of the slavery of which we are all the victims. EDUCATE, that the people may no longer be deluded by illusory hopes of prosperity under any system of society of which monarchs or noblemen, capitalists or landlords form an integral part. ORGANIZE, that a solid, compact and intelligent force, conscious of your historic mission as a class, you may seize the reins of political power whenever possible and, by intelligent application of the working-class ballot, clear the field of action for the revolutionary forces of the future.

The apparent weak point of true socialist war policy lies in the fact that revolutions cannot be made “on command”

Imperialism is but the transition stage to the international union of the proletariat …. Nationalism is dead or dying.

Our party is a party of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletarian revolution is the only solution of the labour problem and all our work must lead to this goal.

Overthrow the capitalist class.

Mass action [demonstrations and general strikes] is the instinctive action of the proletariat, gradually developing more conscious and organized forms …. It is extra-parliamentary in method, although political in purpose and result…. Mass action is the proletariat itself in action, dispensing with bureaucrats and intellectuals, acting through its own initiative; precisely this … horrifies the soul of petty bourgeois Socialism.

The Socialist group in the Chamber affirms .... that, in conformity with the fundamental thinking of the Socialists in all countries and with the tradition of French Socialism ever since the Revolution, it aims to abolish the capitalist system itself and to put an end to the exploitation of man by man, through the conquest of political power by the proletariat, through the substitution of social property for capitalist property, and through international agreement of the workers.

Regardless of the degree of class consciousness of their members, the trade unions are, by their very nature, driven on to the revolutionary goal.

The identification of the intellectuals with the revolutionary movement is dependent … on their complete rift with bourgeois ideology and liberalism …. The relationship of the intellectuals as a group with the working class is essentially an alliance. But the alliance can be established only on the … unadulterated principles of Marxism-Leninism.

A struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the Earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.

Harmony? No! Class war! Hatred to the death for the criminal bourgeoisie!

The Socialist Party emphatically rejects the proposal that in times of war, the workers should suspend their struggle for better conditions.

Any member of the party who … advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation, shall be expelled from membership of the party.

The starting-point in the brochure is not right. To my idea you are mistaken in your judgment regarding the analogy of the West-European revolution with the Russian one, regarding the conditions of the West-European revolution, that is to say the class-relations- and this leads you to mistake the cause, from which this Left Wing, the opposition, originates …. Therefore the brochure SEEMS to be right, as long as your starting-point is assumed. If, however (as it should be), your starting point is rejected, the entire brochure is wrong. As all your mistaken, and partly mistaken, judgments converge …