Charles Emil Ruthenberg (July 9, 1882 – March 1, 1927) was an American Marxist politician and a founder and head of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He is one of four Americans to be buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Biography
Early years
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was born July 9, 1882, in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Wilhelmina (née Lau) and August Charles Ruthenberg. Ruthenberg's parents were ethnic Germans and Lutherans who emigrated from Prussia in 1882. In America, young "Charlie's" father first worked in America on the docks of the Cuyahoga River as a longshoreman. 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.
Ruthenberg graduated from the parochial Lutheran school in June 1896. 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. Ruthenberg married Rosaline "Rose" Nickel, also of German descent, in June 1904. The couple had a son named Daniel in 1905, the only child the pair would have. Ruthenberg worked as the bookkeeper and sales manager for the Selmar Hess Publishing Company in this period, overseeing more than 30 salesmen throughout the Middle West.
Socialist years (1908–1918)
Ruthenberg's first political attraction was to the Single Taxer Tom Johnson, a "reform" mayor of Cleveland from 1901 to 1909. Ruthenberg was drawn to more radical politics, however, and in mid-1908 began calling himself a socialist. Ruthenberg entered Columbia University in 1903. During his time at the university, he would first become involved with anarchist groups. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1909, and joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in the same year.
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). Ruthenberg 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.
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. Ruthenberg 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 final fourth and final run for mayor of Cleveland came in 1919.
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.