Page:Charles Emil Ruthenberg - Speeches and Writings (1928).djvu/15

 Rh bounded energy and inspiration. The drive for the Labor Party, the campaign to root the party in the trade unions, the efforts to win the Negro masses for the Workers' (Communist) Party, the first attempts to secure a firm foothold among the exploited agricultural masses, were all marked by Ruthenberg's intelligence and industry.

It is easily understandable then why the last words of Ruthenberg were: "Build the Party." As far back as 1912, in his first years even in the Socialist Party, when in an atmosphere of Social-Democratic haziness and confusion, Ruthenberg had a remarkably clear appreciation of the role of a revolutionary socialist party. For instance, in speaking of the treachery of Mayor Pape, elected as Socialist Mayor of Lorain, Ohio, Ruthenberg said:

"A socialist official, who, accepting the nomination for office, refuses after getting into office to act in accordance with the wishes of the organization which trusted him, becomes a traitor to the party he pledged himself to support, and is a man who should be dishonored in the eyes of every one but those representatives of capitalism who profit by such acts of perfidy. … Capitalism may buy an individual; it cannot buy the Socialist Party."

From a Leninist viewpoint, the St. Louis Anti-War Resolution of the Socialist Party, adopted immediately upon America's entrance into the war, suffered from many serious shortcomings, but it was a barometer of the intense opposition to the imperialist war on the part of the great masses of the rank and file of the Socialist Party. Ruthenberg was the prime mover in the formulation and adoption of all that was revolutionary in the St. Louis Anti-War platform. It was he who symbolized the revolt of the proletarian elements in the Socialist Party against the pro-Germanism of Berger, the Social-pacifism of Hillquit and the Social-chauvinism of the Spargos, Russells, Wallings, and others. His first imprisonment in the jail at Canton, Ohio, was for fighting the imperialist war and