"But the question is to find and rear leaders that are really one with the masses. This can only be accomplished by the masses, the political parties and the Trade Unions, by means of the most severe struggle, also inwardly"
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Herman Gorter, the Dutch poet turned Marxist theorist, wrote from the upheavals of the 1917-1923 revolutionary wave, when the Left argued over how a workers movement should be led. He accepts that leadership is necessary, but he insists that the only legitimate leaders are those who remain inseparable from the class that creates them. To be one with the masses is not a sentimental phrase; it means leaders formed by collective experience, steeled by strikes, councils, and debates, and answerable to the rank and file at every step.
Rear is the crucial verb. Leaders are not selected like officers appointed from above, nor manufactured by propaganda. They are cultivated through struggle, which disciplines and educates both the led and the leaders. Gorter rejects the easy path of ready-made authority or bureaucratic command. The movement itself, including parties and unions, must produce leaders organically, so that initiative at the top and initiative at the base reinforce each other rather than clash.
Severe struggle also inwardly signals the double front he sees as essential. Outwardly, the class confronts capital and the state. Inwardly, it confronts its own inherited habits: deference to experts, the lure of careerism, parliamentary routine, and the tendency of organizations to harden into bureaucracies. Without that internal struggle, parties and unions become machines that stand over the class, repeating the betrayals that marked social democracy in 1914. With it, they can be reshaped into instruments that amplify mass self-activity rather than stifle it.
Gorters polemic with Lenin, and his sympathy for workers councils, sharpen this point. A vanguard detached from the living movement drifts into domination; a leadership reared in common struggle dissolves the boundary between commander and commanded. The standard he sets is demanding: the means must prefigure the end. A socialist society cannot be built by leadership forms that reproduce hierarchy. It requires a culture of accountability, criticism, and humility through which the class creates the leaders it needs and keeps them its own.
Rear is the crucial verb. Leaders are not selected like officers appointed from above, nor manufactured by propaganda. They are cultivated through struggle, which disciplines and educates both the led and the leaders. Gorter rejects the easy path of ready-made authority or bureaucratic command. The movement itself, including parties and unions, must produce leaders organically, so that initiative at the top and initiative at the base reinforce each other rather than clash.
Severe struggle also inwardly signals the double front he sees as essential. Outwardly, the class confronts capital and the state. Inwardly, it confronts its own inherited habits: deference to experts, the lure of careerism, parliamentary routine, and the tendency of organizations to harden into bureaucracies. Without that internal struggle, parties and unions become machines that stand over the class, repeating the betrayals that marked social democracy in 1914. With it, they can be reshaped into instruments that amplify mass self-activity rather than stifle it.
Gorters polemic with Lenin, and his sympathy for workers councils, sharpen this point. A vanguard detached from the living movement drifts into domination; a leadership reared in common struggle dissolves the boundary between commander and commanded. The standard he sets is demanding: the means must prefigure the end. A socialist society cannot be built by leadership forms that reproduce hierarchy. It requires a culture of accountability, criticism, and humility through which the class creates the leaders it needs and keeps them its own.
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| Topic | Leadership |
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