Ohio History Journal

STEPHEN M. MILLETT

 

Charles E. Ruthenberg: The Development

of an American Communist, 1909-1927

 

 

 

 

The Communist Party of America was the product of native radicalism and a foreign

ideology that inflamed extremists world wide after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917

in Russia. In the United States, many Socialists who had resisted American involve-

ment in the First World War on moral and ideological grounds later saw the Bolshevik

experiment as man's only hope for international peace, class fraternity, and social

amelioration. One such radical was Charles Emil Ruthenberg of Cleveland, Ohio.

Since he joined the movement in its infancy and became an important leader, an

examination of his political career can shed important insights on the character of

early Communism in America.¹

"C. E." Ruthenberg became the first Executive Secretary of the Communist Party

of America at its conception in September 1919. He was neither a Russian emigrant

nor a Soviet agent from Moscow but was born in Cleveland, July 9, 1882, of German

immigrant parents. Ruthenberg had been an American Socialist party leader of ten

years' experience before he was persuaded by the Leninist ideology. His conversion

was not sudden but, rather, was the logical development of his thoughts from utopian

idealism to political revolution. He joined world Communism because he saw in it

the fulfillment of the socialist ideals to which he had dedicated his adult life.

Ruthenberg, like many of the Bolshevik revolutionaries, was not a laborer, but a

middle-class social nonconformist who had lofty ideals for a new social order. His

father had been a cigar maker in Germany and an activist in the German Social

Democratic party but was not politically involved after he left Europe. The father

had four sons by a first marriage and three daughters by a second before his arrival

with his family in Cleveland, only four months before the birth of his last child,

Charles. At first, August Ruthenberg found work as a longshoreman on the ore

docks, but later, he managed a saloon. Everyone in the Ruthenberg family worked

 

 

1. The only published biographical studies of Ruthenberg have been by Communists. The

principal eulogy of his career is by Oakley C. Johnson, The Day Is Coming: Life and Work of

Charles E. Ruthenberg, 1882-1927 (New York, 1957). Other biographical sketches are Jay

Lovestone, Ruthenberg: Communist Fighter and Leader (New York, 1928), Robert Minor, "Our

C. E.," The Communist, XIV (March 1935), 217-226, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Debs,

Haywood, Ruthenberg (New York, 1939). The Ruthenberg Papers at the Ohio Historical Society

were opened to the public in 1969. See Stephen M. Millett, "Charles E. Ruthenberg and Amer-

ican Bolshevism, 1917-1921" (unpublished M. A. thesis, The Ohio State University, 1970), for a

study based on these papers.

 

Mr. Millett is an instructor at the Air Force Institute of Technology.

• 1
 

except Charles. The child was his mother's favorite, usually escaping chores and unpleasant tasks--much to the chagrin of his older siblings. Charles spent much of his time reading, and consequently did very well in school. He thought common work was distasteful, and bragged to his older brother August, "I'll never carry a dinner pail."2 Ruthenberg's earliest ambition was influenced by his mother's desire that he become a Lutheran minister. In 1896, at the age of fourteen, he graduated from the Trinity Evangelical [German] Lutheran School in Cleveland. His instructors remem- bered him as being shy and serious to the point of rarely laughing. Ruthenberg, however, did not pursue the clergy, for either lack of money or interest. Instead, he went to work in a picture frame factory, but did not care for a laborer's life. Then he got a job in a bookstore, where his childhood interest in books and his new interest in salesmanship led him to a new career in business. He attended Berkey and Dyke's Business College in the Standard Building at nights. Ruthenberg began his business career as a bookkeeper and salesman for the Cleveland district office of the Selmer Hess Publishing Company of New York after he graduated from business college in 1898. He achieved the position of assistant manager supervising about forty salesmen.3 As a young man struggling for a living in the commercial world, Ruthenberg believed in the ideals of laissez-faire capitalism and Social Darwinism that were popular at the time. He continued to read widely. His favorite authors were Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, but their ideas of freedom, justice, and personal dignity were hard to reconcile with the materialistic values of the profit motive in business. Through these writings Ruthen- berg became more aware of social problems and the need for political reforms. In   2. Ruthenberg family data compiled by Oakley C. Johnson based on private communications to him from friends, acquaintances and relatives. Box 1, Ruthenberg Papers. 3. Ibid.

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Charles E. Ruthenberg                                                  195

 

1901 he enthusiastically supported the candidacy of reformer Tom Johnson for mayor

of Cleveland; his first political experience came from middle-class Progressivism.⁴

By the age of twenty-three, Ruthenberg was a family man and a businessman with

every promise of advancement. In 1904 he had married a Cleveland girl of German

origin and a year later their only son was born. He continued his intellectual interests

by holding discussions in his home with friends and business associates. About this

time Ruthenberg became interested in socialism through an associate at Selmer Hess,

MacBain Walker who was at the time an admirer of the British Socialist Robert

Blatchford. Ruthenberg found it difficult to refute Walker's socialist arguments in

numerous debates, so he read Karl Marx's Das Kapital. He was so impressed with

the book that he too began to advocate socialism.⁵

The Socialist Party of America was organized at Indianapolis in 1901. There was

a small party organization in Cleveland founded soon after. In 1908 Ruthenberg

began to correspond with the leader of Local Cleveland of the Socialist party, Robert

Bandlow, editor of United Trades and Labor Council's paper, the Cleveland Citizen.

When Bandlow concluded a letter with "For the social revolution in our time,"

Ruthenberg replied, "For the social evolution, may it reach socialism in our time; for

history, as I read it, allows me no other hope." The point of disagreement between

Bandlow and Ruthenberg was whether Mayor Tom L. Johnson's Progressive admin-

istration was a right step toward socialism. Ruthenberg felt strongly that Johnson's

platform of the municipal ownership of utilities was a vital step toward public

ownership of industry in general, and he opposed Bandlow's threat of labor strikes

against the mayor. In 1909 Ruthenberg joined the Socialist party.⁶

The socialist doctrines originating in Europe were not generally popular with

Cleveland's European-born immigrants, who made up one-third of the city's elec-

torate, because of their rapid assimilation into the conventional parties. Local Cleve-

land grew quickly from 342 members in 1909 to nearly a thousand a year later, but

it never became a serious threat to the city's two political party machines. In 1909

Local Cleveland consisted of eight English-speaking and fourteen foreign language

branches. Ruthenberg's rapid rise in the party was probably due to his unique

qualifications: a German-American born in Cleveland, fluent in English, articulate

public speaker, and an efficient party manager. Only one year after joining the party,

Ruthenberg became a member of its City Central Committee.⁷

Ruthenberg was a moderate during his early Socialist period. The central theme

of his speeches and pamphlets was that the capitalist economic system was failing to

provide for the needs of the workers because of inefficiences in production and dis-

tribution. "What society wastes to-day through lack of a conscious effort to make

the means serve the end in view," he wrote in 1911, "would raise the millions who

live in the quagmire of want and misery to a plane where they might enjoy some of

the comforts of life."⁸

Ruthenberg's goal for Socialism was the elimination of industrial waste by a

change of the motive force behind production. He argued that ownership by the

 

4. Ibid. Daniel Ruthenberg showed his father's books with his own underlinings to the author

during an interview in Cleveland, April 25, 1970.

5. Ibid.; McBain Walker to Oakely Johnson, June 7, 1944. Box 1, Ruthenberg Papers.

6. Charles Ruthenberg to Robert Bandlow, May 28, 1908; Bandlow to Ruthenberg, May 29,

1908; Ruthenberg to Bandlow, June 2, 1908. Box 1, Ruthenberg Papers.

7. Wellington G. Fordyce, "Nationality Groups in Cleveland Politics," Ohio State Archaeo-

logical and Historical Quarterly, XLVI (April 1937), 119; Johnson, Ruthenberg, 31.

8. Voices in Revolt: Speeches and Writings of Charles E. Ruthenberg (New York, 1928), 25.

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196                                                            OHIO HISTORY

 

people of land and raw materials as well as production and distribution would

efficiently eliminate the waste of competition so that goods could supply the require-

ments of society. Whereas capitalism appealed to the selfish and greedy traits of man,

he asserted, Socialism called for the personal satisfactions that come from service

rather than profit. "It would give to all the opportunity of living happy, healthy

lives, which would be an incentive to each individual to give the best that is in him

to the service of society," he wrote in May of 1911. Essentially, what he was arguing

was that "Capitalism stands for individualism gone to seed," and that Socialism

"would make its appeal to all those qualities which capitalist ethics glorify theoretically

but ignore in practice."9

In his early Socialist period, Ruthenberg opposed Communism, which he char-

acterized as a system in which all property was owned in common. The important

distinction between Socialism and Communism, he wrote to the Cleveland Citizen

in November 1909, was that the former offered personal fulfillment through a

democratic process of public ownership of property for the public welfare. Ruthen-

berg particularly emphasized the use of the popular initiative ballot, the referendum,

and suffrage for women.¹⁰

From 1909 to 1914 Ruthenberg's political thought shifted from the right wing

(moderate) of the Socialist party to its left wing (radical). In 1910 he argued that

present economic forces of overproduction and under consumption, not the Socialists,

were creating conditions which would lead to a social revolution. The work of the

party was to educate the masses to understand these changes, "so that the revolution

may not be a revolution of force, but a revolution through evolution." Later he

changed his emphasis from social education to legislative reform of the economic

system. In this campaign for reform, the Socialist party was to be the political organ

of the workers which would work to "abolish capitalism." By June 1912, Ruthenberg

began to become more militant. He rejected economic reform and he identified

Socialism with the class struggle of workers against capitalists "for social ownership

of the already socialized means of production."¹¹

Ruthenberg was never an anarchist or a syndicalist. In 1911 he publicly debated

with Emma Goldman on anarchism versus socialism. He opposed sabotage and

violence as tactics in class liberation, although he agreed that Socialism was essentially

the politics of class conflict. In the process of changing society, Ruthenberg believed

the Socialist party had a unique political role to play. It would not act like the

conventional political parties, which placed leaders in offices that tempted them with

personal gain and perpetuated the evils of the political system. Rather, the role of

the Socialist party was to propagandize society through the campaign process. The

goal of the party was to change social attitudes, not elect public officeholders. "The

capitalist system stands for industrial slavery," he wrote in October 1912. "We are

not going to place in the hands of an individual the power to wreck our work ... the

organization shall control the individual for party purposes." The objective of the

party, then, was not to elect officials who would direct the party for personal gain but

to secure members who would pledge themselves to work for the abolition of the

capitalist system and "set up a socialist society, with justice, freedom and plenty for

 

9. Ibid., 15, 24, 28.

10. Ibid., 15.

11. Ibid., 29-33; Ruthenberg to editor of the Cleveland Citizen, January 29, 1910. Box 2,

Ruthenberg Papers.

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Charles E. Ruthenberg                                                  197

 

all."¹² As long as he was in the Socialist party, however, Ruthenberg was confused

as to how capitalism could be ended without using either terrorism or bourgeois

parliamentary politics. He would find the solution to this dilemma in V. I. Lenin's

concept of revolution by an elite party and the Communist dictatorship of the

proletariat.

In 1912 the right and left wings of the Socialist party clashed over the issue of

tactics. Ruthenberg, who had become the Recording Secretary of the Ohio Socialists,

tried to play the role of mediator. In an article for the New York Call, a Socialist

daily, he argued that as long as the party's goals remained lofty there was room in it

for tactical differences. While he opposed violence, he refused to condemn those

who advocated "direct action," as did the International Workers of the World

(IWW). He abhored the intolerance of the party's right wing for the IWW, and he

pleaded for party unity in the common effort against capitalism.¹³

At the 1912 presidential nominating convention held at Indianapolis in May, the

leaders of the right wing (Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, and Eugene V. Debs)

proposed to amend the party's membership qualifications to exclude the left-wing

proponents of violent revolution, particularly the IWW. Their motion passed 187 to

90, with Ruthenberg voting with the minority. Later that year, the New York state

party initiated a mail vote for the expulsion of William ("Big Bill") Haywood, the

IWW leader, from the party's national executive committee. This motion carried

also, with Ruthenberg voting with the majority.¹⁴

As a national party member and editor of the Cleveland Socialist, Ruthenberg be-

came the principal Socialist figure in Cleveland within only four years of having joined

the party. At the same time that he preached class conflict, Ruthenberg continued

his own private career in business. He left Selmer Hess in 1908 and held several dif-

ferent salesmanship jobs until he became a principal manager in the Printz-Bieder-

man Company, manufacturers of ladies' garments. Not until 1917 did he abandon

private enterprise to devote his full time to party organization. Ruthenberg was a

skilled businessman, and one of his most important contributions to the Socialist

organization was his application of management rules to party affairs. Under his di-

rection, Local Cleveland grew to three thousand members. He realized that the

strength of most Socialist urban cells was the unassimilated immigrant. In order to

attract this segment to the party, he offered social as well as political meetings. A

Socialist Sunday School was held from about 9:30 to noon. The children and some

parents were taught Marxist principles and revolutionary songs.¹⁵

From 1910 to 1919, Ruthenberg ran every year as a Socialist candidate for public

office. Each time he lost, but his objective was not election but the spreading of the

Socialist message to the people by means of electioneering. He ran for mayor of

Cleveland four times (1911, 1915, 1917, and 1919). As Socialist candidate for

governor of Ohio in 1912, Ruthenberg polled 87,709 votes. In 1914 he ran for the

Senate and in 1916 and 1918 for Congress.¹⁶

 

12. Private communication to Johnson, Box 1, Ruthenberg Papers: Speeches and Writings,

31, 34; Johnson, Ruthenberg, 73.

13. Ruthenberg in New York Call, July 30, 1912.

14. Johnson, Ruthenberg, 56, 62; David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America: A History

(Chicago, 1967), 68-77.

15. Private communication to Johnson, Box 9, Ruthenberg Papers; Johnson, Ruthenberg, 73,

80-86.

16. Daniel Ruthenberg, Address to the John Reed Club, Box 1, Ruthenberg Papers; Johnson,

Ruthenberg, 37, 71.

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198                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

In the autumn of 1914, the Balkan crisis erupted into a major European war.

Although the European socialist movement, organized into the Second International,

had resolved to oppose any imperialistic war, most workers forgot class interna-

tionalism and flocked to their national colors. The bellicose nationalism of 1914

destroyed pre-war Socialist unity. American Socialists watched closely the European

conflagration and decided to vigorously oppose American involvement in it. Ruthen-

berg was an uncompromising pacifist, and be became a nationally known critic of the

Wilson administration.

One of the few German Socialist leaders to oppose the war in his country was

Karl Liebknecht. In 1910 Liebknecht and Ruthenberg had appeared together in

Cleveland. When the German Socialist leader denounced the war in the Reichstag,

Ruthenberg was determined to oppose the war, too. In May 1917, Ruthenberg said

to a crowd in Cleveland while running for mayor: "I am speaking to you as Karl

Leibknecht spoke in the German nation . . . when he denounced the war as a war

of the ruling class and stated his unalterable opposition to that war.... If you are

inspired with that which will bring a better world, then you must stand up and fight

for that ideal. You must fight with those who are fighting against the war."¹⁷

Liebknecht's view of the war provided the link for Ruthenberg with the Russian

Bolshevik leader, V. I. Lenin. Both Ruthenberg and Lenin interpreted World War I

as a capitalist fight for profits "to fight for the loans their fellow capitalists had made

to the Allies." Both believed that it was the duty of the working class to obstruct the

imperialistic war efforts of the capitalist nations. "Capitalism," Ruthenberg claimed,

"is fighting to replace democracy in this country with a military machine. . . . We

stand for the patriotism of humanity, which welcomes the people of all nations into

the circle of human brotherhood.... We will not fight except to resist and wipe out

of existence the ugliest thing the world has produced--the capitalist system and the

capitalist class." It is not certain whether Ruthenberg knew of Lenin before 1917,

but the coincidence of their opposition to the war was an important factor in

Ruthenberg's conversion to Communism.¹⁸

As long as American public opinion was divided on the war issue, the American

Socialists could denounce it freely. When Congress declared war on Germany in

April 1917, public opinion favored American participation in the European struggle.

The American Socialists then had to decide whether they would change their opinions

of the war or oppose the Wilson administration at the risk of popular persecution.

At a national convention at St. Louis early in April, it chose the latter. Among the

nearly two hundred delegates, Charles Ruthenberg assumed a leadership role in the

anti-war left wing. He won a seat on the war and militarism committee and became

one of three to write the resolution on the war. Their radical report, pledging physical

interference with fund raising, censorship, and conscription, was endorsed by the

committee and won acceptance on the convention floor. Ruthenberg was now a

nationally known enemy of the American war effort.19

 

17. Private communication to Johnson, Box 9, Ruthenberg Papers; Johnson, Ruthenberg, 31;

Ruthenberg, speech at Public Square, Cleveland, on May 27, 1917, in Guilty? Of What? (Cleve-

land, 1917), 25.

18. Ibid., 17-28; V. I. Lenin, "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism," in V. I. Lenin,

Selected Works (Moscow, 1967), I, 673-777. Johnson states that Ruthenberg did not know of

Lenin before 1914, but he learned of him soon after through the writings of S. J. Rutgers, a

Dutch Socialist. Johnson, Ruthenberg, 92, 102, 104.

19. Alexander Trachtenberg, ed., The American Socialists and the War (New York, 1917),

39-43; Shannon, Socialist Party of America, 94-97.

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Charles E. Ruthenberg                                                     199

 

When Ruthenberg returned to Cleveland to campaign against the war, he authored

the Local Cleveland "Manifesto Against War," which stated in part: "We pledge

ourselves to oppose the continuance of the war with all our powers," including a

general strike. He delivered a scathing attack on the Government before over three

thousand people at Public Square on May 27. "This is not a war for democracy,"

he exclaimed, "This is not a war for freedom. ... It is a war to secure the investments

and the profits of the ruling class of this country." Government leaders, he asserted,

were the traitors, not the anti-war Socialists, because they deceived the public about

American business interests in the European conflict. For this speech, Ruthenberg

was indicted by the U. S. District Court in Cleveland on June 27, 1917.20

The Selective Service Act of May 18, 1917, and the subsequent Espionage Act,

expressly forbade most of the obstructionist actions outlined in the Socialist anti-war

resolution. Ruthenberg and two Ohio Socialist party officials (Alfred Wagenknecht

and Charles Baker) were some of the first Socialists tried under these laws. United

States Attorney Edward S. Wertz accused the defendants of encouraging others not

to register for the draft, thus making the Socialists accessories to a crime because of

their anti-war speeches. Wertz called for the jury to "Strike down this viper brood that

is striking at the laws of your country. Strike them down in no uncertain terms, so

that the country will know that in Cleveland . . . we still love the old flag and the

institutions of our country...."21

Ruthenberg, Wagenknecht, and Baker were found guilty on July 21 and 25 and

sentenced to one year in the Stark County (Canton) Workhouse. By their skillful

use of propaganda at the trial, they felt they had won a moral victory by becoming

martyrs for the Socialist cause. "What are we guilty of?", asked Wagenknecht rhetori-

cally: "Guilty of making war upon war. Guilty of defending the working class in its

right to have a voice in its own slaughter. Guilty of voicing opposition to conscription,

the most despicable form of slavery." The case was appealed to the Supreme Court,

which upheld the convictions of the defendants in its decision of January 14, 1918.

Chief Justice Edward D. White rejected the idea that freedom of speech could be

used to obstruct the government's war powers. He also rejected argumentation

against the constitutionality of the draft itself, and he upheld the criminal sections of

the Selective Service Law of 1917. In this case, the Supreme Court set a precedent

for the government's suppression of dissenters during the war.²²

Released on bail pending the Supreme Court's decision, Ruthenberg continued his

work as leader of the Socialist organization in Cleveland. He wrote his last major

Socialist tract, Are We Growing Toward Socialism?, at this time. The themes showed

that his ideological thoughts were still moderate and evolutionary rather than revolu-

tionary. He argued that socialism would be the logical consequence of the historic

economic trend from "primitive communism," to "slavery," to "feudalism," to

"capitalism." He assumed that socialism was the inevitable result of "the evolution

 

 

20. Socialist News (Cleveland), April 14, 1917; Ruthenberg, Guilty? Of What?, 18-20; Ruthen-

berg's Ohio police record in Box 2, Ruthenberg Papers.

21. Edward S. Wertz in Guilty? Of What?, 53-55, 66-67. For the conflict between Socialists and

the Government over the freedom to criticize the war, see, Richard A. Folk, "Socialist Party of

Ohio-War and Free Speech," Ohio History, LXXVIII (Spring 1969), 104-115.

22. Alfred C. Wagenkneckt in Guilty? Of What?, 81-82; Ruthenberg et al. v. United States, 245

U. S. 480. See also Fred D. Ragan, "Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Zechariah Chafee, Jr.,

and the Clear and Present Danger Test for Free Speech: The First Year, 1919," Journal of

American History, LVIII (June 1971), 24-45.

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200                                                            OHIO HISTORY

 

of the machinery of production." "The evolution of capitalism has already produced

the basic conditions necessary in industry for the development of the new social order

which is to succeed it-SOCIALISM." Therefore, he thought violent revolution was

not necessary to make the transition. But "the collectivism, which is developing in

the shape of municipal and state ownership is not Socialism." What Ruthenberg felt

was needed was "a powerful working class movement to facilitate the establishment

of Socialism," and prevent state collectivism from becoming more oppressive for the

workers than private capitalism. "The issue will be whether the capitalists shall

maintain their autocratic control over industry through the government... or whether

the workers shall control the industries." Ruthenberg's program, at this point,

included education of the workers in the humanities, establishment of Socialist

political power base, a take-over of the police and military establishments, as well as

the promotion of humanistic values. "A society [would then be established] in

which oppression and exploitation will be ended forever," in a "Co-operative Com-

monwealth." This tract indicated that Ruthenberg had not accepted Lenin's model

of the professional revolutionary party or violent social revolution as late as

mid-1917.²³

Ruthenberg was a hero to the Socialists and a public enemy to war-time patriots.

Although convicted of a federal misdemeanor, Ruthenberg ran as the Socialist

candidate, while awaiting appeal of the sentence, for mayor of Cleveland in the fall

elections of 1917. At the Labor Day gathering of mayoral candidates at Luna Park,

uniformed soldiers stormed the platform as Ruthenberg began to address the crowd.

He escaped injury, being rescued by vaudeville entertainers who hid him backstage

until he could exit by the stage door. Nonetheless, on election day Ruthenberg

polled 27,685 votes.²⁴

On November 7, 1917, Lenin's Bolshevik party seized power in Russia. While

the American public was largely hostile to the Soviet experiment, Ruthenberg and

other radicals hailed it as a model for future governments. For them the Bolshevik

Revolution seemed to prove that they were right in their opposition to capitalism and

the imperialistic war. As Benjamin Gitlow, a prominent New York radical and future

Communist, wrote, "The Bolshevik Revolution gave the Left Wing Socialists the

program they were looking for." Ruthenberg drafted a resolution passed by Local

Cleveland on November 25, 1917: "We hail the policy of their [Russia's] present

government as the true expression of proletarian action, and pledge ourselves to do

all in our power to assist in wiping out capitalist imperialism and establishing the

civilization of the future, the commonwealth of the workers united irrespective of

nationality."²⁵

Ruthenberg's first connection with the Bolsheviks was a Russian immigrant in

Cleveland named A. Finkelberg. According to him, "As soon as the Russian

Revolution [of November 1917] started, C. E. R. was at once interested. He came

and asked, 'Where can I find a Russian Bolshevik?' They pointed me out, and we

talked." Ruthenberg was apparently enthusiastic because he told Finkelberg that he

 

23. C. E. Ruthenberg, Are We Growing Toward Socialism? (Cleveland, 1917), 7-12, 20,

27-33, 40-41, 44, 48.

24. Johnson, Ruthenberg, 123-124, 125.

25. Peter G. Filene, ed., American Views of Soviet Russia, 1917-1965 (Homewood, III., 1968),

24-26, 35; Benjamin Gitlow, I Confess: The Truth About American Communism (New York,

1940), 21; "Resolution of Local Cleveland, November 25, 1917," in Philip S. Foner, ed., The

Bolshevik Revolution: Its Impact on American Radicals, Liberals, and Labor. A Documentary

Study (New York, 1967), 55.

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Charles E. Ruthenberg                                                   201

 

wanted an American Bolshevik party.²⁶

If Ruthenberg was a convert to Communism before he entered jail, he did not

make it public. In an article for the Socialist News in April 1918, he praised the

Bolsheviks for taking Russia out of the war, but his adulation was not unqualified.

He seemed to believe that the war had hastened governmental centralized manage-

ment of industry and society, that historical forces and not revolutionaries were

changing society. He called for Socialist control of the centralized system. His con-

version to Bolshevism may have come in the winter of 1918-1919, after he read

Lenin's "A Letter to American Workers."²⁷

Ruthenberg and his two comrades served their sentences in the Canton Workhouse

from February 1, 1918 to January 31, 1919. Although out of circulation, Ruthenberg

continued to run Local Cleveland through his wife. The only major incident in jail

was on June 16, 1918, when the Socialist party state convention was held in a park

across from the workhouse. The guest speaker was Ruthenberg's idol, Eugene V.

Debs. Referring to his imprisoned friends, Debs said, "They have come to realize,

as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional rights

of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world." For this

speech Debs was arrested and sent to prison.²⁸

By early 1919, there were several American radical factions that wanted to follow

the Bolshevik leadership of the international socialist movement. Extremist groups

of the Russian foreign language federations of the American Socialist party organized

the American Bolshevik Bureau of Information in 1918. Later that same year, the

Communist Propaganda League was formed in Chicago. Yet, without guidance from

Moscow, the American radicals were unsure whether they should stay within the

Socialist party or organize their own Communist party. This issue fragmented the

radicals into ineffectual groups.²⁹

The New York Left Wing of the Socialist party issued a prototype Communist

manifesto in February 1919. It demanded that the Socialist party renounce its

reformist platform and promote the agitation of workers for the overthrow of the

American government and erect a government "of the Federated Soviets." Local

Cleveland passed a similar resolution which Ruthenberg enthusiastically endorsed:

"We have substituted the industrial revolution as the only means of overcoming the

capitalist state. It is the mass action that will count in the future warfare against the

capitalist state."30

Ruthenberg accepted Communism because it seemed to be the only effective way

after World War I to attain the socialist order. His change from evolutionary

socialism to revolutionary Communism was due to the Bolshevik success in political

revolution in Russia and the American government's suppression of dissent in the

United States. This decision meant a change of his methods from slow peaceful

 

26. Remembrance of A. Finkelberg, Box 9, Ruthenberg Papers. Finkelberg, a Russian Bol-

shevik in the United States, became the American General Secretary of the Society for Technical

Aid to the USSR.

27. Ruthenberg, "On the Threshold of the New World," Socialist News, April 27, 1918; John-

son, Ruthenberg, 129, 138-139.

28. Remembrance of Mrs. Charles E. Ruthenberg, Box 1, Ruthenberg Papers; Eugene V. Debs,

Writings and Speeches of Eugene V. Debs (New York, 1948), 417; Ray Ginger, The Bending

Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs (New Brunswick, 1949), 355, 367.

29. Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (New York, 1969), 106-107, 138.

See also John Reed, "Bolshevism in America," Revolutionary Age, December 18, 1918.

30. "Manifesto and Program of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party," Revolutionary Age,

February 8, 1919; Ruthenberg, "The Left Wing" Revolutionary Age, April 26, 1919.

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202                                                            OHIO HISTORY

 

evolution to a violent confrontation with capitalist society to effect a revolution.

Ruthenberg's first riot experience was on May Day 1919 in Cleveland. He had been

out of jail only four months and wanted to establish publicly his commitment to the

new radicalism. He organized a huge demonstration in Cleveland under auspices of

the Socialist party, the IWW, and several American Federation of Labor unions at a

time when the nation was experiencing an hysterical fear of Communism.

On the morning of May 1, the international workers' day, about 5,000 marchers

gathered to conduct a demonstration through the city. The procession began at

Acme Hall at East Ninth Street and Scovill Avenue. Ruthenberg himself led the

main column toward Public Square while other columns marched toward the same

focal point. The streets were lined by uniformed and armed veterans and hostile

spectators who heckled the marchers. At one point a white-haired old man stopped

the column by trying to seize one of the many red banners that waved above the

marchers. When he was knocked to the ground, policemen appeared to halt the

procession. Along the streets, spectators and Socialists began fighting. A full scale

riot developed involving over 700 policemen. A truck load of club-swinging civilians

and an army tank broke up the demonstration. Later in the afternoon, crowds sacked

Socialist headquarters at 2115 Lorain Avenue, destroyed Ruthenberg's offices at

1222 Prospect Avenue, and unsuccessfully beseiged Socialists at Acme Hall. In total

125 Socialists (including the uninjured Ruthenberg) were arrested, forty people

were seriously injured (including twelve policemen), and an eighteen year old youth

was killed.³¹

The May Day riot was proof for Ruthenberg that society had degenerated to the

point of collapse. "The workers have learned their lesson," he wrote shortly after

the demonstration. "They have learned how 'democracy' meets a peaceable protest.

They know from the thousands who marched that their power is greater than ever.

Another day is coming. They will go until victory is achieved." Recalling the

incident two years later, he called the march the "best constructive work that I have

done."³²

While the country was going through what has been called the Red Scare of 1919,

the radical factions were disorganized and confused, and in no way prepared for a

revolution.³³ In March 1919, selected delegates from the Russian Communist party

organized the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow. The purpose of

the Comintern was to win the workers of the world to Communism, promote revolu-

tion, and spread Bolshevik propaganda to benefit the Soviet government. The only

link between Moscow and the American radicals was Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, head

of the ex officio Russian Soviet Government Information Bureau in New York City.

Marten's mission was to create sympathy among the American workers for the Soviet

regime by means of propaganda. Propaganda, not immediate revolution, would also

be the original task of the Communist Party of America.³⁴

 

31. Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 2, 3, 1919; Ruthenberg, "Cleveland May Day Demonstration,"

Revolutionary Age, May 10, 1919.

32. Ibid.; Ruthenberg to Rachele Ragozin (Communist party worker and Ruthenberg's mis-

tress), February 16, 1921, Box 3, Ruthenberg Papers.

33. For an analysis of the Red Scare, see Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study of National

Hysteria, 1919-1920 (New York, 1964).

34. Louis Fischer, The Soviets in World Affairs: A History of Relations Between the Soviet

Union and the Rest of the World, 1917-1929 (New York, 1960), 215-216, 338; Franz Borkenau,

World Communism: A History of the Communist International (Ann Arbor, 1963), 161-170;

Lusk Committee, Revolutionary Radicalism (Albany, 1920), I, 642-645; L. C. A. K. Martens,

"Soviet Russia and the World," Revolutionary Age, April 19, 1919.

• 10
 

Charles E. Ruthenberg                                                203

 

With the creation of the Comintern, American radicals were more uncertain as

to what their relationship should be with the Socialist party. Some wanted to capture

the Socialist party from within; others wanted their own organization separate from

the Socialists. Their eventual decision on the latter course was forced upon them

in part by the Socialist right wing leadership. Fearing that a recent mail ballot

election for a new National Executive Council would result in a left-wing majority,

the old council nullified the election and expelled seven affiliated foreign language

federations and the Michian Socialist organization. It also called for an Emergency

Convention to be held at Chicago on August 30, 1919 to elect the National Executive

Committee.³⁵

The New York Left Wing (the radical wing of that state's Socialist party), the

expelled federations, and the Michigan group held a National Left Wing Conference

in New York City on June 21. The purpose of the meeting was to decide on radical

doctrine and tactics. Ruthenberg, who had become a staff member of the Left Wing's

newspaper, The Revolutionary Age, and Alfred Wagenkneckt led the large Ohio

delegation which held the balance between the federations and the New York faction.

Nicholas Hourwich and Alexander Stoklitsky of the Russian Federation, already

separated from the Socialist party, proposed that the conference itself become the

American Communist Party. John Reed, witness of the Bolshevik Revolution and

author of Ten Days That Shook the World, and Benjamin Gitlow of New York

objected. They wanted to stay in the Socialist party in order to deliver the entire

party to the Comintern. In the deciding vote, Ruthenberg supported Reed and

Gitlow. The federations walked out of the Conference, determined to form their own

Communist party. The Left Wing Conference proceeded to organize itself as a

radical faction of the Socialist party. It elected its own National Executive Com-

mittee, of which Ruthenberg was a member.³⁶

Ruthenberg was in a leadership dilemma in the summer of 1919. Even though

he was a well known radical, his only base of power was Local Cleveland. As an

intellectual, he was overshadowed by the East Coast radicals, like Reed. He was a

co-author of the Left Wing Conference Manifesto, an important ideological step

toward communism, and a member of the National Council; yet he failed to win any

executive posts. Wagenkneckt, once his closest friend, became Ruthenberg's bitter

rival for leadership positions.³⁷

Late in July of 1919, Ruthenberg shifted his position away from the Reed-Gitlow

group to a more conciliatory attitude toward the federations. On July 26, he still

favored capturing the Socialist party. But two days later, he and four other council

members signed a statement favoring the creation of a separate Communist party

if the Left Wing failed to capture the Socialist party at its convention in August. On

August 2, a rump National Exectuive Council of the Socialist Party (the candidates

who claimed to have been elected to that body in the canceled mail election held

earlier) declared that the Socialist party was to become the Communist party. The

showdown of factions came at the party convention in Chicago. The right wing

 

 

35. Draper, Roots of American Communism, 159-161; Shannon, Socialist Party of America,

127-132.

36. Gitlow, I Confess, 28-33; Minor, "Our C. E.," 220; William Z. Foster, History of the

Communist Party of the United States (New York, 1968), 164-169.

37. The "Left Wing Manifesto" was an expanded version of the one proclaimed on February 8,

1919. It was in complete agreement with the Comintern Manifesto of March 1919. See Revolu-

tionary Age, July 5, 1919 for the complete text.

• 11
 

204                                                            OHIO HISTORY

 

leadership was firmly in control of the proceedings. It called the police to drive the

Left Wing disruptors (which included the Ohio delegation) from the convention hall.

Much to the surprise of the radicals, a majority of the Socialist immigrant workers

were anti-Bolshevik. The convention dominated by the Old Guard right wing decided

overwhelmingly not to join the Comintern.³⁸

The Left wing at this point divided into two factions, resulting in three radical

parties competing for the loyalties of the working class, one old and two new. One of

the new factions wanted to join the "Communist Party" convention of the foreign

language federations down the street. Reed and Gitlow rejected the idea of an

immigrant-dominated party. Ruthenberg played the role of conciliator, much as he

had tried to do at the Socialist party convention of 1912. He wanted a unified party

with a common goal. The two groups, however, split. Reed and Gitlow founded the

Communist Labor party (CLP) on August 31, 1919. They chose Wagenkneckt as

their Executive Secretary. Ruthenberg, excluded from leadership in the Reed-Gitlow

group, joined the federations in creating the Communist Party of America (CP) on

September 1, 1919. Since he was one of the few prominent American born Socialists

to join, Ruthenberg became its first Executive Secretary.³⁹

Ruthenberg now believed that the goal of the Communist party was the violent

overthrow of the American government. He rejected the IWW emphasis on industrial

revolution because political revolution had to precede social and economic reorganiza-

tion of America. His party program stated publicly: "Our party . . . will engage in

the militant mass struggle of the workers, since out of these struggles develop that

understanding and capacity necessary for the workers to establish the dictatorship

of the proletariat." Ruthenberg's problem as Executive Secretary was to organize

the party workers and propagandize the labor movement in preparation for the

eventual revolution. He and his party leaders realized that immediate action without

careful preparation was impossible.40

Local Cleveland of the Socialist party was torn by the same divisions that the

national party suffered. Ruthenberg and Wagenkneckt had been close comrades in

former times, but as rival executives of the two Communist parties they became

bitter enemies. Although Ruthenberg carried more Cleveland Socialists into his

party than Wagenkneckt did, a majority of the 5,000 Cleveland Socialists did not

become Communists. Wagenkneckt was able to seize Ohio Socialist funds of $50,000

for the CLP, while Ruthenberg supplied the CP with Local Cleveland assets. By late

1919, however, Ruthenberg's interests had shifted to Chicago, where his CP offices

were. Wagenkneckt's CLP headquarters remained in Cleveland.⁴1

What many radicals failed to realize in 1919 was that the United States was not

similar to Russia, so the Bolshevik model of revolution was totally inapplicable in

America. The United States had a strong tradition of democratic government that

 

38. Ohio Socialist, October 29, 1919; Revolutionary Age, August 2, 1919 (Ruthenberg was a

member of the Left Wing rump Council), Shannon, Socialist Party of America, 143-148; Nathan

Glazer, The Social Basis of American Communism (New York, 1961), 34.

39. Gitlow, I Confess, 39, 44, 49, 50-51; Christian Science Monitor, September 2, 3, 8, 1919;

The Communist, September 27, 1919; Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American Communist

Party; A Critical History, 1919-1957 (Boston, 1957), 38-40.

40. Ruthenberg interviewed in the Christian Science Monitor, September 16, 1919; The Com-

munist, September 27, 1919.

41. Remembrances in Box 9, Ruthenberg Papers; Daniel Ruthenberg to author, April 26, 1970;

Ohio Socialist, October 29, 1919. See also Fordyce, "Nationality Groups in Cleveland Politics,"

116.

• 12
 

Charles E. Ruthenberg                                                  205

 

Russia had never enjoyed under the Tsars. Lenin had been able to seize power in Pet-

rograd because his country had disintegrated politically under the social and eco-

nomic pressures of its disastrous defeat in World War I, leaving a power vacuum that

the Bolsheviks eagerly filled. The United States not only enjoyed victory in the same

war, but emerged from it stronger than before in almost every way.

A large majority of Americans in 1919 and 1920 were fervently loyal to the

government--although not necessarily favorable to President Wilson's policies--

and were adamantly opposed to radical social change. Over sixteen million people

voted in 1920 for Senator Warren G. Harding of Marion, Ohio, who advocated a

"return to normalcy," a far cry from revolutionary reform. Indeed, many Americans

had an intensive fear of Communists. For their miseries, Americans blamed the

unemployment, the labor strikes that involved over four million workers, inflation,

and the general adjustments of demobilization on political subversives, rather than

the social and economic dynamics that always follow a major war. The American

Legion was founded in 1919 with the purpose "to foster and perpetuate a one hundred

per cent Americanism,"⁴² and the reincarnated Ku Klux Klan championed the most

intolerant kind of patriotism. The attitude of many Americans was expressed well

by Ole Hanson, the mayor of Seattle, Washington:

With syndicalism--and its youngest child, bolshevism--thrive murder, rape, pillage,

arson, free love, poverty, want, starvation, filth, slavery, autocracy, suppression, sorrow

and Hell on earth. It is a class government of the unable, the unfit, the untrained; of scum,

of the dregs, of the cruel, and of the failures.⁴³

Even though feared, the Communist parties were no serious threat to American

political security in 1919. First, they were quite small in membership. Ruthenberg's

CP claimed 58,000 followers, while Wagenkneckt's CLP claimed 30,000, but it has

been estimated that they both together had no more than 40,000 members.⁴⁴ Much

of this membership melted away during government suppression by Attorney-General

A. Mitchell Palmer in the winter of 1919-1920. There were probably only 10,000

Communists by the end of 1920.⁴⁵ Second, the Communists had little influence with

labor unions. Few Communist leaders, including Ruthenberg, had any mass following

beyond a small locale. In its first years of existence, the Communist party was little

more than a propaganda society. Many Americans thought they saw subversion by

Communist agitators during the large coal and steel strikes of 1919, when in reality

Communists were so divided among themselves over doctrine, tactics, and leadership

they were too disorganized to threaten the government.⁴⁶

The Communist party was only in its infant stage when it was nearly destroyed

by Government suppression and by continued internal dissension. On the night of

November 7, 1919, Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered raids on the

Russian federations. The following night, local police and state agents under the

 

42. Murray, Red Scare, 5-9, 15, 88, 90-99.

43. Ole Hanson, Americanism Versus Bolshevism (Garden City, 1920), viii.

44. Draper, Roots of American Communism, 189-190. For other estimates on Communist

party membership, see Benjamin Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives (New York, 1948), 53, and

William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States (New York, 1952), 171.

45. Foster, History of the Communist Party, 178, 181; Gitlow, I Confess, 65.

46. Robert K. Murray, "Communism and the Great Steel Strike of 1919," Mississippi Valley

Historical Review, XXXVIII (December 1951), 445-466; Alexander Bittelman, "History of the

Communist Movement in America," Hearings Before a Special Committee to Investigate Com-

munist Activities in the United States, House of Representatives, Part 5, Vol. 4 (1930), 442.

• 13
 

206                                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

authority of the Lusk Committee of the New York state legislature raided Communist

headquarters in New York City. Five principal Communists leaders, including

Ruthenberg, were indicted for violating New York's criminal anarchy law. The

charges against them were advocating the violent overthrow of the Government,

circulating subversive literature, and being "evil-disposed and pernicious persons

and of most wicked and turblent dispositions."⁴⁷ On January 2, 1920, the Govern-

ment conducted the famous Palmer Raids that resulted in the arrest of 5,000 suspected

revolutionaries in thirty-six cities. Although the raids resulted in very few indictments

and convictions, they drove about two-thirds of the 70,000 Communist rank and file

out of the party and seriously damaged any popular appeal that the Communists

may have had with workers.⁴⁸

Ruthenberg was at this time under indictment in three states.⁴⁹ Released on bail,

he was free to try to reorganize the party before his trial in New York in October

1920. Ruthenberg's CP had split into two bitterly rival factions, making the Com-

munist threat to American society so slight as to be inconsequential, despite public

fears to the contrary. Ruthenberg could not agree with the impractical revolutionary

notions of the Russian-American immigrant leaders. Guided by organizational

pragmatism, he opposed their demand for an open avowal of the use of violence

to gain political power because this would further endanger the safety of the party

leaders under governmental investigation. Ruthenberg also wanted to abolish the

federations as semi-autonomous units within the party, as they had been in the

Socialist party. He also wanted a fusion of the CP and the CLP. On April 20, 1920,

Ruthenberg's faction left the CP and proposed merger with the CLP. Late in May

Ruthenberg's groups and the CLP joined the United Communist party at a secret

convention at Bridgman, Michigan. The party's Central Committee contained five

members from each of the two blocs, with Ruthenberg as the Executive Secretary.⁵⁰

In February 1920 the American Communists had received their first instructions

from the Comintern in Moscow. Written sometime in the fall of 1919, the letter was

first published in Current History in February of 1920. It recommended a total break

with the Socialist party and the creation of a militant Communist party for the purpose

of organizing workers' strikes and fomenting insurrection against the government.

The Russian Bolsheviks were not familiar with the situation in America, but they

seemed to think that the American Communists could use the same tactics the

Bolsheviks had used in Russia.⁵¹

Ruthenberg maintained his leadership of the United Communist party during the

1920's largely due to his uncanny anticipation of Moscow's wishes and his ability to

translate them to the American situation. He had favored the creation of an American

Communist party before Moscow had ordered it. In May 1920, he had advocated

an integrated, unified party organization with a mass following. He had argued that

 

 

47. Quoted by Howe and Coser, American Communist Party, 55.

48. Gitlow, I Confess, 60-66; Draper, Roots of American Communism, 202-209. See also

Robert D. Warth, "The Palmer Raids," South Atlantic Quarterly, XLVIII (January 1949), 1-23.

For CP and CLP membership, see Foster, History of the Communist Party, 171.

49. Ruthenberg was arrested on July 9, 1919 and July 18 in Cleveland for violation of Ohio's

Criminal Syndicalism law; on December 1, 1919 in Chicago; and December 20, 1919 in New

York City. Ruthenberg's Police Record, Box 2, Ruthenberg Papers.

50. Bittelman, "History of the Communist Movement in America," 442-443; Foster, History of

the Communist Party, 177.

51. Current History, XI (February 1920), 303-304.

• 14
 

Charles E. Ruthenberg                                                    207

 

the party had to prepare for the revolution by first infiltrating the labor movement.⁵²

The United Communist party was largely as Ruthenberg had wished it to be. Its

declared goal was to "systematically and persistently familiarize the working class

with the inevitability of armed force in the proletarian revolution. The working class

must be prepared for armed insurrection as the final form of mass action by which

the workers shall conquer the State power...."53

Two months later Moscow published instructions to the American Communists

in the Communist International. It ordered the unification of the CP and CLP under

the leadership of the American-born radicals. It also instructed the Americans to

concentrate on revolutionizing the workers by both legal and illegal methods.⁵⁴

Ruthenberg's program for the United Communist party was thus vindicated by

Moscow.

Benjamin Gitlow was the first Communist leader tried and convicted of the charges

resulting from the Lusk Committee raids. Ruthenberg stood trial for violating the

New York anarchy law, passed after the assassination of President McKinley in

1901. After the Gitlow conviction, he and another Communist, I. E. Ferguson, were

also found guilty. On October 29, 1920, he was sentenced to five to ten years at

Sing Sing, a New York state prison. Both Ruthenberg and Ferguson served less than

eighteen months. In the spring of 1922 their cases were appealed, and Judge

Benjamin Cardoza of the New York Court of Appeals granted them a new trial and

ordered them released on bail.⁵⁵

While Ruthenberg was confined in Sing Sing, the Communist factions united at a

meeting in Woodstock, New York, in May 1921. The new party was named the

Communist Party of America, Section of the Communist International. It was an

underground party that advocated both clandestine political and union agitation.⁵⁶

Seven months later the party inaugurated a parallel legal party, The Workers (Com-

munist) Party of America. Ruthenberg now had the kind of a mass-appeal party

that he had wanted in 1920. Upon leaving prison, he stayed in New York where he

immediately resumed his duties as the party's chief executive.⁵⁷ Ruthenberg's leader-

ship of the American Communist movement was confirmed in Moscow at the Fourth

Congress of the Comintern in November 1922. Leon Trotsky told the American

delegates that the foreign language federations were wrong in trying to dominate the

American movement. Ruthenberg's Russian rivals, Hourwich and Stoklitsky, were

 

 

52. Ruthenberg, "What Kind of Party?" The Communist, May 8, 1920. After the Palmer

Raids, Ruthenberg often wrote under the name of David Damon. Ruthenberg consistently

advocated the unification of all factions into one Communist party. See David Damon, "Make

the Party a Party of Action," The Communist, April 25, 1920.

53. Quoted by James Oneal, American Communism: A Critical Analaysis of Its Origins,

Development, and Programs (New York, 1927), 89-90. A United Communist Party handbill

advocated that the American workers do what the Russian workers had done in Petrograd.

Box 2, Ruthenberg Papers.

54. Communist International, No. 11-12 (June-July 1920), cols. 2495-2500.

55. Johnson, Ruthenberg, 148-149, 152-153. The Gitlow Case decided by the Supreme Court

in 1925 is a landmark case in the constitutional history of freedom of speech. See Gitlow v.

New York, 268 U. S. 652.

56. Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of America, Program and Constitu-

tion of the Communist Party of America, May 1921, pp. 16-22, 25, 27-28, 40-41, 43; Johnson,

Ruthenberg, 153.

57. Robert Minor reported that Ruthenberg walked into a Central Committee fully oriented.

"Our C. E.," 223. Ruthenberg conducted party business from Sing Sing through Rachele

Ragozin and a trusted guard. Remembrance of Rachele Ragozin, Box 9, Ruthenberg Papers.

• 15
 

208                                                            OHIO HISTORY

 

ordered back to Moscow, eliminating their threat to Ruthenberg's authority.⁵⁸

Ruthenberg had not been out of Sing Sing more than forty days when he was

arrested again. The party leadership held a meeting at Bridgman, Michigan, before

the party's convention in Chicago. On August 21, 1922, federal agents under

Attorney-General Harry L. Daugherty of Ohio raided the gathering and arrested

Ruthenberg and twenty other Communists. The Executive Secretary was released on

$10,000 bond. Ruthenberg's trial took place in April 1923, and he received another

conviction for violating federal security laws. Ruthenberg served only twenty days of

his five year sentence in January 1925 before he went free pending appeal to higher

courts. The case was still before the Supreme Court when Ruthenberg died unex-

pectedly in 1927.⁵⁹

One of Ruthenberg's major party struggles was to make the Communist party a

legal political organization. Yet many members wanted it to remain underground,

as it had been since the Palmer Raids. After the Bridgman Raid, Ruthenberg could

not sway his followers to renounce their inclinations for clandestine operation. Again

Moscow made the final decision. The Comintern ordered the American Communists

to come out into the open. Ruthenberg proved that he was in tune with the Kremlin's

changing policies more than any other American Communist leader.⁶⁰

Ruthenberg's desire was to form a national front of labor-farmer groups into a

popular political party under Communist domination. In July 1923, he succeeded

in capturing the Federated Farmer-Labor party, and he hoped to infiltrate the

Progressive party by supporting Senator Robert LaFollette for President in 1924.

At this time William Z. Foster, the only Communist leader with extensive labor

influence, began to seriously challenge Ruthenberg's leadership. Once more, internal

party fights were settled in Moscow rather than by the American Communists them-

selves. In May 1924, the Comintern had disapproved of Ruthenberg's popular front

tactics. But when he went to Moscow in 1926-27, Ruthenberg found that policy

changes in the Kremlin had shifted in favor of the very methods he had advocated

earlier. Ruthenberg was fully vindicated against his party enemies. Realizing that

important power changes were being made in the Russian Communist party, Ruthen-

berg exploited the rift between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky to brand his political

rivals as Trotskyites. Ruthenberg realized that his continued control of the party

depended to a large degree on his acceptability to the Kremlin.⁶¹

Foster challenged the Executive Secretary again at the Worker's party convention

in August 1925. He had a sizable majority of the delegates, and he was determined

to take over Ruthenberg's post. Every vote taken went against Ruthenberg. Then

the Comintern agent S. I. Gusev, who enjoyed a close relationship with Stalin,

intervened with a cable from Moscow ordering the convention to keep Ruthenberg in

 

 

 

58. Joseph P. Cannon, The First Ten Years of American Communism (New York, 1962),

68-71, 75. Cannon was an early member of the Communist party, a follower of the Reed-Gitlow

leadership. He played a major role in the unification of the various factions while Ruthenberg

and Gitlow were in prison. After Ruthenberg's death, Cannon was expelled from the party for

being a Trotskyite.

59. Johnson, Ruthenberg, 154-155, 163-165; Draper, Roots of American Communism, 370-372.

60. Cannon, First Ten Years, 84-85. See also remembrances of I. Amter and J. B. Ballam

(American Communist leaders), Box 9, Ruthenberg Papers.

61. Remembrance of J. B. Ballam, Box 9, Ruthenberg Papers; Theodore Draper, American

Communism and Soviet Russia (New York, 1960), 133-140. See also Foster, History of the

Communist Party, 211-224.

• 16
 

Charles E. Ruthenberg                                                 209

 

his position. With Stalin firmly behind him, Ruthenberg's leadership was never

seriously questioned again.⁶²

Charles Ruthenberg died suddenly on March 2, 1927, of a ruptured appendix. He

was forty-four years old. His body was cremated in Chicago and sent by train to

New York. His remains were sent from New York to Moscow, where his ashes

were interred in the Kremlin Wall with full honors. John Reed and C. E. Ruthenberg

are the only American Communists so honored by the Kremlin.⁶³

Ruthenberg was the personification of the synthesis of native radicalism and

foreign ideology that was characteristic of the early Communist party. He was an

American Socialist leader who joined Communism because of its success in attaining

goals for which he was striving. These goals were described in a speech in May 1922

as follows:

The last element calls for that development of the organized working class movement in

this country which will build up a powerful organization not only to win struggles of the

present but to win the struggles against the capitalists and to bring the time when workers

will control and administer industry.⁶⁴

Ruthenberg was an insatiable idealist as well as an activist. He was inspired by

the ideas of Jefferson, Paine, and traditional American humanitarianism. He was

captivated by the intellectual theories of Marx. He was fascinated by the organiza-

tional and revolutionary genius of Lenin. Ruthenberg was a dreamer, a dreamer of

a new age of human fraternity and social justice, albeit attainable only by revolu-

tionary means. In Communism he thought he saw the means to those ends. He

believed that the Bolshevik experiment in Russia would prove to be a model for

future social organization. "The Communist Movement in the United States--just

as elsewhere in the world, owes its existence, its clarity of purpose to the splendid

demonstration of the correctness of the principles laid down by Karl Marx, given by

the Russian Workers in their victory of November 7, 1917 .. .," Ruthenberg

explained.⁶⁵

Ruthenberg's death marked an important transition in the American Communist

movement. During his leadership, the party had shifted from romantic clandestine

revolutionary enthusiasm of 1917-1919 to organizational discipline and doctrinal

subserviance to Moscow. Ruthenberg never lost sight of the reasons why he had

entered the movement, although policy changes by the Kremlin in the mid 1920's

made the hope for immediate revolutionary activity in the United States less likely.

Whether Ruthenberg's radicalism led to either personal happiness or self-fulfillment

is not known. He lost years of freedom and sacrificed family life only to die at an

early age with his dreams unrealized. His son has claimed that Ruthenberg had

grown disenchanted with Communism by the mid-1920's and was looking for a way

out of the party, but there is no documentary evidence to support this view. He did

not survive, in any event, to experience the profound disillusionment of his generation

of American Communists that was caused by the brutal Five Year plans and purges

by Stalin during the 1930's.

 

62. Cannon, First Ten Years, 132-136: Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia,

140-149.

63. Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia, 243-245.

64. The Worker, May 20, 1922.

65. Ruthenberg, "The Russian Revolution and the American Communist Movement," typed

copy, 1922. Box 3, Ruthenberg Papers.

• 17