What if Charles Ruthenberg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._E._Ruthenberg
who was at least nominally the leader of the American Communist Party from its birth in 1919 until his death on March 1, 1927, lived longer? (His death, after an emergency operaton for a burst appendix, came as a surprise; he was only 44 years old.) Ruthenberg's last words, as reported by his lieutenant and successor Jay Lovestone, sound a little bit too edifying to be true: "'Tell the comrades to close their ranks, to build the Party,' Ruthenberg had allegedly said. 'The American workers [in the *Daily Worker* version this becaame "the American working class"--see http://www.marxisthistory.org/…/0303-dw-ruthenbergisdead.pdf for the obituary] under the leadership of our Party and the Comintern, will win. Let's fight on!'" https://books.google.com/books?id=BCM
wAAQBAJ&pg=PT224
Throdoere Draper in his *American Communism and Soviet Russia* evaluated Ruthenberg as follows:
"American Communism owed much to Ruthenberg. As its titular leader since 1919, he had done more than anyone else to rid it of its underground mentality and to hold it together. At crucial periods, however, he had yielded the real leadership to others, particularly to [John] Pepper. [See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pepper for some background on Pepper.] Yet a stronger or a weaker man in his position might have split the party. He assumed the role of one too proud, too dignified, too sure of himself to stoop to the petty vices of his rivals and supporters. This attitude struck some as merely an exasperating pose. But, on the whole, it had served Ruthenberg's ambitions well by partially disarming the opposition, which could never work up as much animus against him as it could against Pepper or Lovestone. In Moscow, he had always been trusted to lead the party, but not to lead it too much...
"Ruthenberg's era of Communist leadership in large part paralleled the postwar upswing of American capitalism as well as Zinoviev's reign in the Comintern. Neither was propitious for the emergence of a truly successful and creative American Communist leader. The economic tide beat back every movement of reform as well as of revolution, and Zinoviev's Comintern prized obedience far above originality. No great practical achievement and no significant theoretical contribution was linked with Ruthenberg's name. He gave American Communism an efficient, respected, colorless office manger; he did not give it an authoritative, inspiring, path-finding leader." https://books.google.com/books?id=qzYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA247
James Cannon (who with William Z. Foster and Alexander Bittelman led a faction oppposed to Ruthenberg--until 1928 when Cannon underwent a sudden conversion to Trotskyism and was expelled from the Party-- would later write,
"We often speculated how things might have worked out if Ruthenberg had lived. Ruthenberg was a factionalist like the rest, but he was not so insane about it as Lovestone was. He was far more constructive and responsible, more concerned for the general welfare of the party and for his own position as a leader of a party rather than of a fragmented assembly of factions. Moreover, he was far more popular and influential, more respected in the party ranks, and strong enough to veto Lovestone’s factional excesses if he wanted to.
"It is quite possible that an uneasy peace, gradually leading to the dissolution of factions, might have been worked out with him. His sudden death in March 1927 put a stop to all such possibilities. The Ruthenberg faction then became the Lovestone faction, and the internal party situation changed for the worse accordingly." https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/…/letters/spr56b.htm
We should not underestimate Ruthenberg as a factionalist, though. He fought more "honorably"--at least less obnoxiously--for his faction than Lovestone did, but still he fought. In 1926, he wrote Lovestone "Our opponents (Bittelman, Browder, Foster) have submitted at least 150 pages of documents against us. . . . They are shining examples of Foster's methods-—continuous, shameless lying. If one needs to be convinced that there can be no peace while Foster's methods continue, one need only read a score of pages of his brazen lies." https://books.google.com/books?id=BCM
wAAQBAJ&pg=PT210
And while Ruthenberg's opponents may not have hated him as much as they did Lovestone, and at times were willing to coexist with him, they still wanted to remove him from power if they could. In 1925, at the fourth convention of the Workers (Communist) Party it seemed that Foster was on the verge of doing just that--until the Comintern's envoy Sergei Gusev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Ivanovich_Gusev simply overruled the majority and in effect handed control of the Party back to Ruthenberg. Foster's later claim that "During the factional fight Ruthenberg enjoyed the confidence of both warring groups, so that even during its bitterest phases he remained general secretary" http://williamzfoster.blogspot.com/…/chapter-nineteen-build… is thus wildly misleading. As Draper wrote, "Unluckily for Ruthenberg, Foster chose to show his confidence in peculiar ways; and luckily for Ruthenberg, he enjoyed the Comintern's confidence in addition to Foster's. Foster's strange desire to pay homage to Ruthenberg's memory probably arises less from a guilty conscience than from the need to find at least one past general secretary of the party of whom some good may be said. Yet Foster has never faced up to the basic contradiction in his latter-day apotheosis of Ruthenberg--that Ruthenberg was the party's first great, good leader but that the two men who worked with him so closely and so long, Pepper and Lovestone, were, according to Foster, the party's greatest, most sinister misleaders..." https://books.google.com/books?id=qzYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA246
The big question of course is whether, unlike Lovestone in OTL, Ruthenberg could stay in Stalin's good graces. "Lovestone states that Ruthenberg got fed up with the maneuvers in Moscow [in 1925] before the tide turned in his favor. On one occasion, Lovestone says, Ruthenberg told him: "We shouldn't stay here. They don't want an American movement." Lovestone then talked him out of breaking away: "No, this is not the time. We don't control the party yet" (interview with Lovestone, June 21, 1954). Lovestone apparently referred to this incident in his testimony (Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities, Vol. XI, p. 7146). I have not come across any other evidence that Ruthenberg ever entertained any thought of breaking away from the Comintern. However, Melech Epstein also offers this opinion: "If not for his death in March 1927, in his middle forties, Ruthenberg would undoubtedly have been expelled by the Comintern," a conclusion evidently based in part on Ruthenberg's behavior in Moscow in 1925 (Jewish Labor in U.S.A. 1914-1952, New York: Trade Union Sponsoring Committee, 1953, p. 116). " https://books.google.com/books?id=qzYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA503 But even if Lovestone's quote is authentic, it may simply have been a passing mood on Ruthenberg's part; Foster too at times showed a spark of rebellion but always yielded to the Comintern in the end.
In any event, I don't see any evidence that Ruthenberg was particularly "right-wing" or an "American exceptionalist" at the time of his death in 1927--except in the sense that the entire Comintern was! As of early 1927, it was entirely orthodox to maintain that American capitalism, unlike European, was still "on the upgrade." (Indeed, if anything, maybe Ruthenberg was starting to move a little to the left, well before the Comintern did. Shortly before his death, Ruthenberg said that a depression was "in the offing" in the US which would lead to a sharpening of the class struggle.) This was the Comintern's line, supported by Stalin as well as Bukharin, and in the American CP by the Bittelman-Foster faction as well as Ruthenberg's. It is really hard for me to see Ruthenberg sticking with Bukharin as long as Lovestone did (Lovestone even quoted Bukharin approvingly as late as December 1928, when anyone could see that Bukharin had fallen into disfavor). Lovestone really seems to have imagined that his control over the American CP was so absolute that he could negotiate with Stalin--in Moscow!--as an equal. I doubt that Ruthenberg would have had any such delusions. In addition, Stalin--and he wasn't alone in this--seems to have found Lovestone *personally* offensive in a way which he might not have found Ruthenberg.
Even if Stalin approved of Ruthenberg's remaining in charge of the American CP, there would have been one more problem--in the early 1920's Ruthenberg had been sentenced to at least three years in prison by a court in Michigan under that state's "criminal syndicalism" law. He died before having to actually serve his sentence, but IIRC he had exhausted his appeals, and if he really would have had to serve his sentence, I doubt that on release he could just pick up and resume his Secretaryship the way Browder did in 1942 after a much shorter sentence.
who was at least nominally the leader of the American Communist Party from its birth in 1919 until his death on March 1, 1927, lived longer? (His death, after an emergency operaton for a burst appendix, came as a surprise; he was only 44 years old.) Ruthenberg's last words, as reported by his lieutenant and successor Jay Lovestone, sound a little bit too edifying to be true: "'Tell the comrades to close their ranks, to build the Party,' Ruthenberg had allegedly said. 'The American workers [in the *Daily Worker* version this becaame "the American working class"--see http://www.marxisthistory.org/…/0303-dw-ruthenbergisdead.pdf for the obituary] under the leadership of our Party and the Comintern, will win. Let's fight on!'" https://books.google.com/books?id=BCM
Throdoere Draper in his *American Communism and Soviet Russia* evaluated Ruthenberg as follows:
"American Communism owed much to Ruthenberg. As its titular leader since 1919, he had done more than anyone else to rid it of its underground mentality and to hold it together. At crucial periods, however, he had yielded the real leadership to others, particularly to [John] Pepper. [See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pepper for some background on Pepper.] Yet a stronger or a weaker man in his position might have split the party. He assumed the role of one too proud, too dignified, too sure of himself to stoop to the petty vices of his rivals and supporters. This attitude struck some as merely an exasperating pose. But, on the whole, it had served Ruthenberg's ambitions well by partially disarming the opposition, which could never work up as much animus against him as it could against Pepper or Lovestone. In Moscow, he had always been trusted to lead the party, but not to lead it too much...
"Ruthenberg's era of Communist leadership in large part paralleled the postwar upswing of American capitalism as well as Zinoviev's reign in the Comintern. Neither was propitious for the emergence of a truly successful and creative American Communist leader. The economic tide beat back every movement of reform as well as of revolution, and Zinoviev's Comintern prized obedience far above originality. No great practical achievement and no significant theoretical contribution was linked with Ruthenberg's name. He gave American Communism an efficient, respected, colorless office manger; he did not give it an authoritative, inspiring, path-finding leader." https://books.google.com/books?id=qzYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA247
James Cannon (who with William Z. Foster and Alexander Bittelman led a faction oppposed to Ruthenberg--until 1928 when Cannon underwent a sudden conversion to Trotskyism and was expelled from the Party-- would later write,
"We often speculated how things might have worked out if Ruthenberg had lived. Ruthenberg was a factionalist like the rest, but he was not so insane about it as Lovestone was. He was far more constructive and responsible, more concerned for the general welfare of the party and for his own position as a leader of a party rather than of a fragmented assembly of factions. Moreover, he was far more popular and influential, more respected in the party ranks, and strong enough to veto Lovestone’s factional excesses if he wanted to.
"It is quite possible that an uneasy peace, gradually leading to the dissolution of factions, might have been worked out with him. His sudden death in March 1927 put a stop to all such possibilities. The Ruthenberg faction then became the Lovestone faction, and the internal party situation changed for the worse accordingly." https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/…/letters/spr56b.htm
We should not underestimate Ruthenberg as a factionalist, though. He fought more "honorably"--at least less obnoxiously--for his faction than Lovestone did, but still he fought. In 1926, he wrote Lovestone "Our opponents (Bittelman, Browder, Foster) have submitted at least 150 pages of documents against us. . . . They are shining examples of Foster's methods-—continuous, shameless lying. If one needs to be convinced that there can be no peace while Foster's methods continue, one need only read a score of pages of his brazen lies." https://books.google.com/books?id=BCM
And while Ruthenberg's opponents may not have hated him as much as they did Lovestone, and at times were willing to coexist with him, they still wanted to remove him from power if they could. In 1925, at the fourth convention of the Workers (Communist) Party it seemed that Foster was on the verge of doing just that--until the Comintern's envoy Sergei Gusev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Ivanovich_Gusev simply overruled the majority and in effect handed control of the Party back to Ruthenberg. Foster's later claim that "During the factional fight Ruthenberg enjoyed the confidence of both warring groups, so that even during its bitterest phases he remained general secretary" http://williamzfoster.blogspot.com/…/chapter-nineteen-build… is thus wildly misleading. As Draper wrote, "Unluckily for Ruthenberg, Foster chose to show his confidence in peculiar ways; and luckily for Ruthenberg, he enjoyed the Comintern's confidence in addition to Foster's. Foster's strange desire to pay homage to Ruthenberg's memory probably arises less from a guilty conscience than from the need to find at least one past general secretary of the party of whom some good may be said. Yet Foster has never faced up to the basic contradiction in his latter-day apotheosis of Ruthenberg--that Ruthenberg was the party's first great, good leader but that the two men who worked with him so closely and so long, Pepper and Lovestone, were, according to Foster, the party's greatest, most sinister misleaders..." https://books.google.com/books?id=qzYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA246
The big question of course is whether, unlike Lovestone in OTL, Ruthenberg could stay in Stalin's good graces. "Lovestone states that Ruthenberg got fed up with the maneuvers in Moscow [in 1925] before the tide turned in his favor. On one occasion, Lovestone says, Ruthenberg told him: "We shouldn't stay here. They don't want an American movement." Lovestone then talked him out of breaking away: "No, this is not the time. We don't control the party yet" (interview with Lovestone, June 21, 1954). Lovestone apparently referred to this incident in his testimony (Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities, Vol. XI, p. 7146). I have not come across any other evidence that Ruthenberg ever entertained any thought of breaking away from the Comintern. However, Melech Epstein also offers this opinion: "If not for his death in March 1927, in his middle forties, Ruthenberg would undoubtedly have been expelled by the Comintern," a conclusion evidently based in part on Ruthenberg's behavior in Moscow in 1925 (Jewish Labor in U.S.A. 1914-1952, New York: Trade Union Sponsoring Committee, 1953, p. 116). " https://books.google.com/books?id=qzYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA503 But even if Lovestone's quote is authentic, it may simply have been a passing mood on Ruthenberg's part; Foster too at times showed a spark of rebellion but always yielded to the Comintern in the end.
In any event, I don't see any evidence that Ruthenberg was particularly "right-wing" or an "American exceptionalist" at the time of his death in 1927--except in the sense that the entire Comintern was! As of early 1927, it was entirely orthodox to maintain that American capitalism, unlike European, was still "on the upgrade." (Indeed, if anything, maybe Ruthenberg was starting to move a little to the left, well before the Comintern did. Shortly before his death, Ruthenberg said that a depression was "in the offing" in the US which would lead to a sharpening of the class struggle.) This was the Comintern's line, supported by Stalin as well as Bukharin, and in the American CP by the Bittelman-Foster faction as well as Ruthenberg's. It is really hard for me to see Ruthenberg sticking with Bukharin as long as Lovestone did (Lovestone even quoted Bukharin approvingly as late as December 1928, when anyone could see that Bukharin had fallen into disfavor). Lovestone really seems to have imagined that his control over the American CP was so absolute that he could negotiate with Stalin--in Moscow!--as an equal. I doubt that Ruthenberg would have had any such delusions. In addition, Stalin--and he wasn't alone in this--seems to have found Lovestone *personally* offensive in a way which he might not have found Ruthenberg.
Even if Stalin approved of Ruthenberg's remaining in charge of the American CP, there would have been one more problem--in the early 1920's Ruthenberg had been sentenced to at least three years in prison by a court in Michigan under that state's "criminal syndicalism" law. He died before having to actually serve his sentence, but IIRC he had exhausted his appeals, and if he really would have had to serve his sentence, I doubt that on release he could just pick up and resume his Secretaryship the way Browder did in 1942 after a much shorter sentence.
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