Life & Wisdom Quote by Herman Gorter

A reprimand disguised as camaraderie, Gorter’s line turns “Comrade” into both embrace and warning. The target is not some abstract moral failing but a tactical mistake: choosing the comfort of proximity to “rulers” over the messy leverage of “fighters.” The bluntness matters. Gorter writes like someone who has watched movements rot from the inside, where the first betrayal isn’t a coup but a subtle shift in attention: who gets flattered, who gets listened to, who gets framed as “responsible.”

The phrase “introductory stage” is doing heavy lifting. In Western Europe, with its parliaments, unions, and socialist parties tempted by gradualism, Gorter implies that revolution is not a single event but a learning curve. Early on, your job isn’t to polish a governing class-in-waiting; it’s to thicken the muscle of struggle, to build confidence, discipline, and independent organization among those who actually bear the risk. “Encourage” reads almost gentle, but it’s a hard strategic verb: morale is infrastructure.

The subtext is a critique of reformist socialism and party leadership that starts acting like management. Gorter, a poet in the orbit of radical Marxism, understands how language can launder hierarchy: “leaders” become “rulers” with one swapped word, and the romance of guidance is exposed as domination. It’s less a utopian slogan than an early warning system: if you invest in rulers before the base is ready, you don’t get transition - you get substitution.