Charles Emil Ruthenberg (July 9, 1882 – March 1, 1927) was an American Marxist politician who was the founder and first head of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He is one of five Americans to be buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Early life, education, and early career
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was born July 9, 1882, in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Wilhelmina (née Lau) and August Charles Ruthenberg.Oakley C. Johnson, The Day is Coming: Life and Work of Charles E. Ruthenberg, 1882–1927. New York: International Publishers, 1957. Page 7. Ruthenberg's parents were ethnic Germans and Lutherans who emigrated from Prussia in 1882.Johnson, The Day is Coming, pp. 8–9. Johnson notes that C. E.'s father was "not a churchgoer." In America, young "Charlie's" father first worked in America on the docks of the Cuyahoga River as a longshoreman.Johnson, The Day is Coming, pg. 13. In later years the elder Ruthenberg went into business for himself with a son-in-law, tending bar at a saloon frequented evenings by those who worked on the docks.Theodore E. Kretchmar, My Friend C.E. Ruthenberg: Testimony of Theodore E. Kretchmar, Collected by Oakley C. Johnson for a Biography of C.E. Ruthenberg, circa 1940. Tim Davenport (ed.). Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, May 2012; pg. 1.
Ruthenberg graduated from the local parochial Lutheran school in June 1896.Johnson, The Day is Coming, pg. 14.
He went to work in a bookstore, attending Berkey and Dyke's Business College in the evenings for a ten-month course in bookkeeping, accounting, and typing.
He entered Columbia University in 1903. During this time period he also worked as the bookkeeper and sales manager for the Selmar Hess Publishing Company, overseeing more than 30 salesmen throughout the Middle West. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1909.Johnson, The Day is Coming, pg. 25
Political career Socialist years (1908–1918) Ruthenberg's first political attraction was to Tom L. Johnson, a Single Taxer and reform mayor of Cleveland from 1901 to 1909. Ruthenberg was drawn to more radical left-wing politics, and in mid-1908 began calling himself a socialist.Johnson, The Day is Coming, pg. 21.
During his time at Columbia University, which he entered in 1903, he first became involved with anarchist groups. After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1909, he joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA).
Ruthenberg was an organizer for and, later, secretary of Local Cuyahoga County from 1909 to 1919. In addition he was on the Ohio State Executive Committee of the SPA from 1911 to 1916, where he edited the newspapers The Cleveland Socialist (1911–1913) and Socialist News (1914–1919). He also contributed material to the official organ of the Socialist Party of Ohio, The Ohio Socialist. He was elected to the National Committee of the Socialist Party in 1915 but was defeated by Arthur LeSueur at the annual meeting for election to the party's governing National Executive Committee.The Socialist Party published a monthly membership bulletin for its members from 1905 through 1914. From July 1914 it published party news in a series of official newspapers, called variously The American Socialist (1914–1918), The Eye-Opener (1918–1919), The Socialist World (1920–1925), and The American Appeal (1926–1927).
During this time Ruthenberg traveled to many cities throughout the American Northeast and Midwest, speaking to labor groups, trade union organizations, and anti-war groups, building a network of contacts. He was associated with the far left so-called "Impossibilist" wing of the SPA, which had little hope for the efficacy of ameliorative reform, seeking instead revolutionary socialist transformation.
Ruthenberg was a frequent candidate on the ticket of the Socialist Party. His first electoral failure came in 1910, when he ran for Ohio's state treasurer on the Socialist ticket. In 1911 he ran for mayor of Cleveland, in 1912 for Governor of Ohio, for U.S. Senate in 1914. In 1915 he ran again for mayor of Cleveland and in 1916 he ran for United States Congressman. In 1917 he made his third run for mayor of Cleveland (receiving 27,000 votes of 100,000 cast), followed by his second run for Congress in 1918. His fourth and final run for mayor of Cleveland came in 1919.Robert Minor, "Our C. E.," The Communist, vol. 14, no. 3 (March 1935), pp. 217–218.
Ruthenberg was a delegate to the seminal 1917 Emergency National Convention of the SPA. There he was elected to the Committee on War and Militarism and was one of three primary authors of the aggressively antimilitarist St. Louis program, along with Morris Hillquit and Algernon Lee.
After American entry into World War I, Ruthenberg continued to publicly attack the imperialist conflict and America's participation in it. He was charged with violating the Espionage Act, accused of obstructing the draft in connection with a speech given at a rally on May 17, 1917. Also charged at the same time were Alfred Wagenknecht and Charles Baker. They were tried together in July 1917 and sentenced to one year in the Ohio State Penitentiary, a decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 15, 1918. Informed of this decision, he issued a statement declaring:
The Supreme Court has decided we must spend a year in jail. The crime for which we are convicted is truth telling. We believe in certain principles; we fought for those principles, and we go to jail ostensibly for inducing a certain Alphones Schue not to register. The charge is merely an excuse.... The important fact is that the ruling class feared our message to the workers and tried to silence that message. That fact should make a hundred willing workers take up the work we lay down....New York Evening Call, Jan. 17, 1918, pp. 1, 3.
Ruthenberg, Wagenknecht, and Baker served almost 11 months of their sentence and were released on December 8, 1918.
1919 Cleveland May Day Riot
Freed from prison in December 1918, Ruthenberg dove in with both feet to the burgeoning left wing movement rocking the Socialist Party. May Day of 1919 was an event of enormous enthusiasm and great fear. A gigantic assembly was planned in Cleveland, in which four parades of marchers, many waving red flags, came together in the public square to hear speeches and rally for freedom for Eugene V. Debs and Tom Mooney and the adoption of the 6-hour day and the $1 minimum wage. As many as 20,000 people are said to have participated in the march, with 20 to 30,000 more people lining the streets to watch. Ruthenberg later described the events that followed: When the head of the line was within a block of the Public Square the first trouble occurred. An officer in the uniform of the Red Cross jumped from a "Victory" Loan truck and endeavored to take a red flag which a soldier in uniform was carrying at the head of the procession. A scuffle followed in which other soldiers from the truck and some businessmen joined. During the scuffle one of these businessmen drew a revolver and wildly threatened the workers in the procession. In five minutes, however, the struggle was over. The lieutenant and his supporters were driven back to the sidewalk, the head of the line reformed, and with the red flag still flying, marched on to the Public Square. Suddenly, the police made their appearance: They came down Superior Ave., which divides the "Square" into northern and southern sections, headed by the mounted squad, followed by auto load after load. The newspapers later reported that 700 men had been concentrated at the Central Station, who now descended upon the marchers.... The first thousand or so of workers marched onto the square and took possession of the "Victory" Loan speakers' stand, which had been built over the stone blocks placed on the Public Square for the use of speakers at public meetings... The chairman was about to introduce [me] as the first speaker when an officer and a few soldiers tried to climb to the platform, demanding that the soldier that held the red flag give it up... [Then], without warning, a squad of mounted police dashed into the audience, driving their horses over the assembled workers and clubbing them as they went."C. E. Ruthenberg, "The Cleveland May Day Demonstration," in The Revolutionary Age, May 10, 1919, pg. 4.
A riot ensued, pitting the police and their supporters (backed by tanks) against the marchers. Two marchers were killed in the fighting, hundreds injured, and about 150 arrested in this Cleveland May Day Riot.Ruthenberg, "The Cleveland May Day Riot," pg. 4. Ruthenberg was charged for incitement to murder in connection with this event but no conviction was obtained.
Formation of the CPUSA
Ruthenberg was an early endorser of the Left Wing Manifesto written by Louis C. Fraina and around which the formal Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party congealed. He was a Left Wing-supported candidate for the Socialist Party's governing National Executive Committee in the party election of 1919, the result of which was overturned by the outgoing NEC ostensibly on the grounds of election fraud carried out by some of the branches associated with the party's language federations.
Ruthenberg was a delegate to the June 1919 Convention of the Left Wing Section and was elected there as a member of the faction's governing National Council. He was initially supportive of the tactic of continuing to fight "to win the Socialist Party for the Left Wing" at its forthcoming 1919 Emergency National Convention in Chicago, but in the face of federation pressure for immediate formation of a Communist Party USA and the apparently hopeless task faced by Wagenknecht & Co., he shifted his support to the Federations and their call for an immediate Communist Party.
Dominated as it was sure to be by the Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Latvian language federations, the anglophonic Ruthenberg was a valuable commodity to federation leaders like Alexander Stoklitsky, Nicholas Hourwich, and Joseph Stilson. Nor did Ruthenberg owe any allegiance to the Socialist Party of Michigan, led by John Keracher and Dennis Batt. Therefore, Ruthenberg made an ideal candidate to head the new organization, which was established in Chicago on September 1, 1919, as the Communist Party of America (CPA). While decisive authority on the floor of the convention and on the Central Executive Committee which it elected remained under the control of the so-called "Russian Federations," he was elected by the Chicago conclave as the first Executive Secretary of the new organization. Ironically, it was his old Ohio party comrade and prison mate, Alfred Wagenknecht, who was elected to head the rival Communist Labor Party of America in the aftermath of the failed effort to win control of the Socialist Party at its August 1919 Convention.
A period of bitter and acrimonious rivalry followed, in which both of the competing American communist organizations sought to win the favor (and financial support) of the Communist International (Comintern). Adding to the complexity of the situation, the Socialist Labor Party of America and the Socialist Party of America sought affiliation with the Comintern as well. The Comintern was adamant about its structure, however, and it sought one and only one centralized organization in each country. Merger between the CPA and CLP was demanded.