GORTER, Herman

(1864–1927)

   Poet and politician. In 1889, the classicist scholar Gorter published the long poem Mei (May), which won him fame. In 1895, he translated Baruch Spinoza’s Ethica into Dutch. Soon the aesthetician Gorter was converted to historical ma terialism. In 1904, he published a Dutch translation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Communist Manifesto(1848). He was an editor of the monthly De Nieuwe Tijd [The New Era] of the Sociaal Democra tische Arbeiderspartij (SDAP, Social Democratic Labor Party), founded in 1894. After having been expelled from the party, with Henriette Roland Holst, Anthonie Pannekoek, and others he founded the Sociaal-Democratische Partij (SDP, Social Democratic Party, renamed in 1918 the Communist Party), of which he was a member of the executive committee.

   Gorter served as an editor of the Marxist weekly De Tribune.

   Hardly inclined to compromise, he collided with other party bosses, and even with V. I. Lenin, with whom he spoke in Moscow in 1920. The same year, he founded a new political party, the Kommunistis che Arbeiderspartij Nederland (Communist Workers Party in the Netherlands), affiliated with the German Kommunistische Arbeiter Partei Deutschland, which he had joined, also in 1920. In his and Pannekoek’s view, sovietsof workers were the only authentic way to ward the realization of communism. Gorter’s poetry and essays were collected in eight volumes (Verzamelde Werken, 1948–1952).

   See also Socialism.