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MARCH 1927

"Ruthenberg is Dead: Statement of the Political Committee of the W(C)PA." [March 3, 1927] On March 2, 1927, 44-year old General Secretary of the Workers (Communist) Party of America C.E. Ruthenberg succumbed following emergency surgery for acute appendicitis which developed into peritonitis. The sudden loss of the top party leader ushered in a battle for control of the party apparatus which was ultimately won by Jay Lovestone, a factional associate of Ruthenberg. This rather hagiographic obituary from the front page of The Daily Worker salutes the fallen leader of the party. Ruthenberg is lauded as the chief author on the Socialist Party of America's militant anti-war program adopted in 1917 and as the primary leader of the Left Wing movement which ultimately led to the splitting of the Socialist Party in 1919. A melodramatic and altogether too handy set of last words are attributed to Ruthenberg in this piece, with the Cleveland-born leader said to have declared: "TELL THE COMRADES TO CLOSE THEIR RANKS, TO BUILD THE PARTY. THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS, UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF OUR PARTY AND THE COMINTERN, WILL WIN. LET'S FIGHT ON!"

Ruthenberg, Red Radical Leader, Dies: Cleveland Bookkeeper in Two Famous Trials Here for Communist and Anti-War Activities." (Cleveland Plain Dealer). [March 3, 1927] Hatchet job obituary from the main Cleveland daily newspaper marking the sudden death of C.E. Ruthenberg at age 44. Ruthenberg is said to have died "shattered and disillusioned" -- "He did not live to see the revolution, so his life’s work went for naught." The paper turns in a poetic bit of understatement when it notes that "Ruthenberg refused to keep still about the war" and is positively shocked to recall that "the President’s signature was hardly dry on the declaration of hostilities before Ruthenberg was on a soapbox in Public Square denouncing the conflict as 'mass murder,'" blithely ignoring the fact that the conflict had begun nearly 3 years and 10 million corpses earlier. The better part of a decade after the event, the Plain Dealer reverses its biased coverage of the Cleveland May Day Riot of 1919 at last to report: "The mob swept in from the curbs, tore down the red flags, snatched red sashes from the women, and red neckties from the men. For a block the street was a grand free-for-all fist fight. Two men were killed and 200 injured. Instead of arresting those who had attacked the parade, the police arrested the marchers." Ruthenberg is characterized as a "bitter and humorless" stump speaker who was profoundly ineffective. His surviving widow and son are accorded a clean bill of health, apparently inaccurately, as "not communists." An impressively lengthy list of Ruthenberg's arrests is included.

"Ruthenberg Dead! Farewell Comrade Ruthenberg; Farewell Our Leader," by Jay Lovestone [March 15, 1927] An exercise in hagiography and succession politics by the chief lieutenant of recently deceased Workers (Communist) Party leader C.E. Ruthenberg. "The entire American working class has suffered the greatest loss in its history," Lovestone breathlessly asserts. Lovestone credits his "closest guide, leader, and friend" Ruthenberg with being the first person in the (four decade long) American revolutionary socialist movement "to realize the value of organization." Ignoring the two men convicted with him (Wagenknecht, Baker) as well as scores of other Wobblies, Socialists, and anarchists arrested more or less simultaneously, Lovestone credits Ruthenberg as the "first one" in America imprisoned "for inspiring and organizing masses of workers to resist the drive of our imperialists to throw the American working class into the death orgy of the great war." Ruthenberg, not Louis Fraina, is credited with being the motivator of the left wing movement that split the Socialist Party in 1919. It is Ruthenberg, not Alexander Stoklitsky of the Russian Socialist Federation, whom Lovestone calls the "leader of the forward step" of forming a Communist Party of America. It was Ruthenberg, not William Z. Foster, who issued a slogan which "aroused and inspired the thousands of steel workers of Gary to the most valiant resistance displayed in the whole strike," in Lovestone's estimation. And so on, and so forth. There are certain obvious parallels here between Lovestone's shameless and slightly unhinged paean to the factionally-driven competition between party leaders in Soviet Russia to canonize Lenin following his sudden death in January 1924.

APRIL 1927

"C.E. Ruthenberg," by William Z. Foster [April 1927] On March 2, 1927, 44-year old General Secretary of the Workers (Communist) Party C.E. Ruthenberg succumbed to a bacterial infection suffered in the aftermath of an appendectomy, giving the America Communist movement a new icon for which to burn a candle. This eulogy was published by the chief factional rival of Ruthenberg in the party, William Z. Foster. Foster gives tribute to Ruthenberg as "one of the most often indicted and imprisoned workers in the American movement" and recalls their joint embroilment in the St. Joseph, Michigan trials of the spring of 1923 which followed the raid of the August 1922 Bridgman Convention of the underground CPA. Foster recalls: "Ruthenberg made his defense like a true proletarian fighter. He made no effort to evade the question or to seek refuge in legal trickery. He made a clean-cut defense of the left wing movement. From the witness stand, in which Ruthenberg put hours of the time of the trial, he outlined the position of the party, its attitude toward the questions of the day, its role in the labor movement, its aims and its methods. His thoughtful analysis was itself a challenge and a warning to the capitalist court that while it was likely that he would be convicted, the historic movement which he represented at the trial could not possibly be imprisoned or defeated..."

"Ruthenberg, the Fighter: The Passing of an American Pioneer," by James P. Cannon [April 1927] Eulogy of the recently deceased leader of the Workers (Communist) Party C.E. Ruthenberg by a factional foe, published in the monthly magazine of International Labor Defense. Cannon recalls Ruthenberg's personal interest in the general movement for workers' legal defense and emphasizes his place as a founder of the ILD. He calls Ruthenberg "no fly-by-night dabbler" in the revolutionary movement, but rather a long-time and "consistent advocate of political action" who nevertheless "fought against the current of reformist corruption in the Socialist Party." Ruthenberg is characterized as a "tireless worker," a "party man," and a "soldier" for whom money meant nothing. Cannon lauds Ruthenberg for his "courage, devotion, and self-sacrifice" and asserts that "new generation of militants will be influenced by that tradition and will carefully safeguard it."

"The Socialists in the War," by James Oneal [April 1927] (Graphic pdf) With the Socialist Party of America at its 1920s nadir, National Executive Committee member James Oneal pauses to reexamine the party's wartime experience in the pages of The American Mercury. In Oneal's telling the Socialists were a "small band" who challenged the corporations, politicians, newspapers, the church, and smug small town society and its various mechanisms of coercion over American entry into the World War and the establishment of conscription in the country. "We had not calculated on the mob," Oneal acknowledges: "Few of us had any idea of the crowd-hysteria that could be summoned up by journalists, politicians, and the bourgeois intelligentsia in general." A section of the party defected from Socialist ranks over the issue, Oneal indicates. Oneal attempts to show that such defections were by some Socialist intellectuals such as A.M. Simons and William English Walling who were former adherents of the ideological left of the party; these formed a "Left squad" on behalf of Woodrow Wilson and his American "Cheka" in fueling the hysteria and suppression, joined by others like John Spargo and Allan Benson from the party's Right, as well as anti-Socialist nemesis Samuel Gompers of the AF of L. Within a year of American entry into the war, 22 Socialist publications were banned from the mails, several of which were prohibited from express shipment by train. Mail was held up, offices raided, officials prosecuted, and "no man was safe from the swarm of informers, spies, and agents provocateurs, volunteer and official," Oneal notes, adding that "once having got their hands on the national throat, the bureaucrats continued business into the peace period." The end result was the destruction of "a thousand or more of the Socialists' locals in the smaller towns and cities" by the organized "White Terror," Oneal asserts. On the other hand, "we increased our membership, after the war, in the large cities," he says, although the Bolshevik revolution in Russia led to the emergence of "an irresistible desire to ape the Russian Bolsheviks" by "hundreds of ambitious Lenins." There followed a period in which agents of Wilson's Cheka "immediately entered the Bolshevik organizations, helped to write their programs, rose to high positions in them, arranged for their scattered members to meet on the same night all over the country, and then bagged thousands of them in a general raid." Oneal concludes: "We Socialists thrived on the malice of the Cheka, but the Bolshevik nonsense hurt us. It left gaping wounds from which we have not recovered."

AUGUST 1927

"The Aims and Methods of Young Workers Education," by Oliver Carlson [August 1927] Oliver Carlson was a former National Secretary of the Young People's Socialist League (1918-1919) who joined the Workers Party of America and was an active leader of the Young Workers League. From 1925-1928 he was annually the Director of Communist Summer Schools sponsored by the Workers (Communist) Party, including the very first of these events (Waino, WI). This article was written by Carlson for the 1927 YWL Winlock, Washington Camp Yearbook. Analytical and pedagogical in tone, Carlson first addresses the possible criticism that the curriculum at the Summer Schools are "biased": "We were determined that a definite working class outlook should permeate every subject studied. We openly admitted that all education is of necessity biased, especially that which deals with social, economic, and political problems. Ours was biased in favor of the proletariat. For the benefit of those who demand 'pure truth,' let me point out that the working class view on social sciences is far more correct than that "impartial" view which is dished out to the unsuspecting in the public educational institutions." After discussing the relative effectiveness of various methods of instruction, Carlson advocates relatively older rather than younger students in the schools: "The boy or girl of 14, 15, or 16 years who is still in school has not as yet been forced to shift for himself, to make his own living, and to feel the pressure of the class struggle. To such a one the class war and all other theories relating to it cannot be duly appreciated." He also advocates a skewing of more males than females for a similar reason, that more men than women are wage workers, particularly in the "more basic industries where the need for theoretical and practical leadership is the greatest."

"Questions and Answers to American Trade Unionists: Stalin's Interview with the First American Trade Union Delegation to Soviet Russia," by I. Stalin; Introduction by Jay Lovestone. [discussion of Sept. 9, 1927] Full text of a pamphlet published by the Communist Party, providing stenographic quotations of a very extensive dialog between Iosif Stalin and a number of American trade unionists and academics in the Soviet Union on a fact-finding tour. Stalin answers a dozen questions posed by the visiting delegates, sidestepping only a query about his concrete differences with Trotsky, before turning the tables and asking a series of questions of the Americans about conditions in their own country. One passage by Stalin the perceived role of the Comintern in the daily life of national parties is of particular interest: "The assertion that the American Communists work under 'orders from Moscow' is absolutely untrue. There are no such Communists in the world who would agree to work 'under orders' from outside against their own convictions and will and contrary to the requirements of the situation. Even if there were such Communists they would not be worth a cent. Communists bravely fight against a host of enemies. The value of a Communist, among other things, lies in that he is able to defend his convictions. Therefore, it is strange to speak of American Communists as not having their own convictions and capable only of working according to 'orders' from outside. The only part of the labor leaders' assertion that has any truth in it at all is that the American Communists are affiliated to an international Communist organization and from time to time consult with the Central body of this organization on one question or another.... Some people believe that the members of the Communist International in Moscow do nothing else but sit and write instructions to all countries. As there are more than 60 countries affiliated to the Comintern, one can imagine the position of the members of the Comintern who never sleep or eat, in fact do nothing but sit day and night and write instructions to all countries."