On January 19, 1924, Cannon was named Assistant Executive Secretary of the Workers Party of America, working under his faction rival, Ruthenberg.

The ( initially hypothetical ) band was with Beahm ( then ' Bobby Pyn ,' and later Darby Crash ) on vocals, Ruthenberg ( then and later called Pat Smear ) on guitar, an early member named " Dinky " ( Diana Grant ) on bass, and Michelle Baer playing drums.

Darby Crash ( born Jan Paul Beahm ) ( September 26, 1958 – December 7, 1980 ) was an American punk musician who, along with long-time friend Pat Smear ( born Georg Ruthenberg ), co-founded The Germs.

Ruthenberg, which was largely organized by his supporter Jay Lovestone ; and the Foster-Cannon faction, headed by William Z.

Charles Emil Ruthenberg was born July 9, 1882 in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ruthenberg was soon drawn to more radical politics, however, and in the middle months of 1908 he began calling himself a socialist.

Ruthenberg was an Organizer for and later Secretary of Local Cuyahoga County continuously from 1909 to 1919.

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.

Despite his personal disdain for political half-measures, Ruthenberg was a frequent candidate on the ticket of the Socialist Party.

Ruthenberg was a delegate to the seminal 1917 Emergency National Convention of the SPA.

Ruthenberg was charged for incitement to murder in connection with this event but no conviction was obtained.

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.

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.

Ruthenberg 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 of America and the apparently hopeless task faced by Wagenknecht & Co., Ruthenberg 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.

Therefore, the ambitious 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 in the hands of the so-called " Russian Federations ," Ruthenberg was elected by the Chicago conclave as the first Executive Secretary of the new organization.

Ruthenberg was in jail.

In October 1920, Ruthenberg was tried together with his associate Isaac Ferguson in New York for alleged violation of the state's Criminal Anarchism law, said to have been breached by the Left Wing Section when it published Fraina's Left Wing Manifesto the previous year.

Ruthenberg was immediately made Executive Secretary of the WPA upon his release on bail, with Abram Jakira in charge of daily operations of the parallel and underground CPA.

This is exemplified by the fact that the former Executive Officer of the Lutheran Church in Queensland and current member of the Executive of the Lutheran Church in Australia, Trevor Ruthenberg, was once a member of the air force and is now a politician in Campbell Newman's conservative state government.

Ruthenberg died on March 2, 1927, and his longtime factional ally Jay Lovestone took over his position as Executive Secretary of the party.

Thereafter Ruthenberg was the sole Executive Secretary of the American Communist Party ( still calling itself the Workers Party of America ) — a position which he retained for the rest of his life, despite spending much of the 1920s as a leader of a minority faction within the party.

Even so, John Pepper, the Comintern's representative in the U. S., and those, such as Charles Ruthenberg, who had criticized Foster for his closeness to Fitzpatrick now directed Foster to make the CPUSA an important player in this new party.

Wagenknecht headed this new joint organization with Ruthenberg placed in charge of the party press.

The expelled federations formed the bulk of the membership of the new Communist Party of America led by Charles Ruthenberg and Louis Fraina ; the Communist Labor Party, created later, appealed more to American-born workers.

Ruthenberg, recalled the necessary change of the Communist Party to an underground organization after the Palmer Raids of January 1920 as the root cause of the problem:

In outline terms, a fight erupted among the leadership of the CPA in 1920 and Ruthenberg, together with a group of his English-speaking adherents such as Isaac Ferguson and Jay Lovestone as well as the Chicago-based section of the Russian federation, exited the organization ( along with a major part of the group's funds ) in April 1920 and joined with the Communist Labor Party to form the United Communist Party ( UCP ) in May.

* From the Third through the Fourth Convention of the Workers ( Communist ) Party of America by Charles E. Ruthenberg Chicago, Ill.: Published for the Workers ( Communist ) Party of America by the Daily Worker Pub.

Rivalries within the CPUSA led to the loss of the 1926 New York dressmakers ' strike, as neither the Foster or Ruthenberg faction wanted to appear to sell out by accepting a settlement that the Party's members within the strike leadership had recommended.

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.

Nor did Ruthenberg owe any allegiance to the idiosyncratic Socialist Party of Michigan, led by John Keracher and Dennis Batt.

The above ground WPA headed by Ruthenberg grew rapidly, boosted by the addition of the massive Finnish Federation to its ranks, while the underground party withered and died, put to bed for good in 1923.

The Criminal Anarchism convictions of Ruthenberg and Ferguson were ultimately overturned by the New York Supreme Court In July 1922, just in time for another round of prosecutions, this time related to ill-fate August 1922 Unity Convention of the CPA held at Bridgman, Michigan.

Ruthenberg and his supporter Jay Lovestone were at odds with a rival faction led by William Z.

The Court had voted 7 – 2 ( with Brandeis joined by Holmes dissenting ) against Ruthenberg.

Ruthenberg and Closing Address to the Jury by Isaac E. Ferguson ( 1920 ).

* Why Every Worker Should Be a Communist and Join the Workers Party by Charles E. Ruthenberg Chicago, Ill.: Workers Party of America, 1923

Ruthenberg and Louis C. Fraina, turned away from that effort and formed their own party, the Communist Party of America, at a separate convention on September 1, 1919.

The band began when Jan Paul Beahm and Georg Ruthenberg decided they should start a band after being kicked out of University High for antisocial behavior, allegedly for using ' mind control ' on fellow students.

" Debs spoke with pride of the devotion with which his " most loyal comrades were paying the penalty to the working class – these being Wagenknecht, Baker and Ruthenberg, who had been convicted of aiding and abetting another in failing to register for the draft.

In protest of his jailing, Charles Ruthenberg led a parade of unionists, socialists, anarchists and communists to march on May 1 ( May Day ) 1919, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Part of the Communist Party of America under the leadership of Charles Ruthenberg and Jay Lovestone did this but a faction under the leadership of Nicholas I. Hourwich and Alexander Bittelman continued to operate independently as the Communist Party of America.

Ruthenberg, 1924.

Ruthenberg died in 1927 and his ally, Lovestone, succeeded him as party secretary.

Ruthenberg, The Farmer-Labor United Front.

He sided with the Fraina / Ruthenberg faction that opted to create a National Left Wing Council that would attempt to take over the Socialist Party.

Upon the death of Charles Ruthenberg in 1927 he became the party's national secretary.

Ruthenberg exited the Communist Party of America and along with his factional supporters ( such as Jay Lovestone and Isaac Edward Ferguson ) constituted themselves as the " real " CPA with a view to merger with the CLP.

A telegram from the Comintern directed the Party, after a vote which Foster had won decisively over his opponent, Benjamin Gitlow, to install Ruthenberg as general secretary of the Party.