Karl Heinrich Otto Rühle (German: [ˈʁyːlə]; 23 October 1874 – 24 June 1943) was a German Marxist writer, educator, Reichstag deputy, and prominent theorist of the council-communist movement. He is known for his rejection of party politics in favour of workers' councils, his critique of Bolshevism, and his famous declaration: "The revolution is not a party affair". Initially a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Rühle became a prominent voice in the party's left wing. Along with Karl Liebknecht, he was one of the first Reichstag deputies to vote against war credits in 1915. He was a co-founder of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) but left in 1919 to play a leading role in the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD). After his break with the KAPD in late 1920, he developed a political tendency that was both anti-party and anti-union, centred on the Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union – Einheitsorganisation (AAU-E). Writing under the pseudonym Carl Steuermann, Rühle produced a pioneering Marxist analysis of fascism in the early 1930s. His theoretical work extended to a critique of the Soviet Union as a form of state capitalism and of Bolshevism as a bourgeois ideology, famously equating it with fascism as "Red Fascism". After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, he spent his final years in exile in Mexico, where he participated in the Dewey Commission to investigate the Moscow Trials. He died in Mexico City in 1943. Largely forgotten for a time, Rühle was rediscovered by the anti-authoritarian student movement of the 1960s, and his writings have remained influential in libertarian socialist and council-communist circles.
Early life and Social Democratic Party Otto Rühle was born on 23 October 1874 in Großschirma, Saxony, the son of a railway official. He studied at the teacher's seminary in Oschatz from 1889 and became an official in the Freethinker movement while still a student. After working as a private tutor and a teacher, he was dismissed from his post as a primary school teacher in 1902.
Rühle had joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1896 and founded a socialist Sunday school. After his dismissal, he became a writer and editor for social-democratic newspapers in Hamburg, Breslau, Chemnitz, Pirna, and Zwickau. He was an early critic of what he saw as outdated teaching methods and became a leader of the social-democratic education society in Hamburg. In 1907, he became a traveling teacher for the SPD's central committee, gaining a national reputation for his socially critical pedagogical writings, including Das proletarische Kind (The Proletarian Child) in 1911. In 1912, Rühle was elected as the Reichstag deputy for the Saxony 8 constituency (representing Pirna-Sebnitz), a position he held until 1918. Rühle was part of the far-left wing of the SPD, alongside figures like Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Franz Mehring. Together with Liebknecht, he was one of the first Reichstag deputies to vote against war credits in March 1915. In 1916, in solidarity with the imprisoned Liebknecht, he resigned from the SPD parliamentary faction. He was a co-founder of the Spartacus League and participated in its conference on 1 January 1916. His public call for a party split in a letter to the SPD newspaper Vorwärts on 12 January 1916 put him in opposition to Rosa Luxemburg, who still hoped to win over the party leadership. Rühle did not join the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) when it was formed in 1917, but instead became a leader of the Left Radicals (Linksradikale) in Dresden and Pirna.
German Revolution and communist left
German Revolution During the German Revolution of 1918–1919, Rühle played a prominent role in the workers' councils movement in Dresden. On 9 November 1918, he became chairman of the Revolutionary Worker and Soldier Council and, a day later, co-chairman of the United Revolutionary Worker and Soldier Council of Greater Dresden. However, on 16 November, he and other members of the International Communists of Germany (IKD) resigned from their functions, refusing to cooperate with the SPD and USPD. At the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in late December 1918, Rühle was a delegate for the IKD and a leader of the opposition that argued strongly against any participation in the upcoming elections for the Weimar National Assembly. Despite his disagreements with the party leadership, he was tasked with helping build the KPD in Saxony in early 1919. Throughout the year, he, along with Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolffheim, became a leader of the party's left opposition. This opposition rejected the KPD's turn towards parliamentarism and trade union work, advocating instead for direct action through factory organisations and workers' councils. At the KPD's second party congress in Heidelberg in October 1919, Rühle and other ultra-left delegates were forced to leave the proceedings after voting against the leadership's "Theses on Communist Principles and Tactics". The third party congress in February 1920 formally expelled Rühle from the KPD.
KAPD and break with the Comintern In April 1920, Rühle was a co-founder of the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD), which brought together the expelled left wing of the KPD. In June 1920, he traveled to Moscow as a KAPD delegate to the Second World Congress of the Comintern. Rühle returned from Russia profoundly disillusioned, convinced that the Russian Revolution was degenerating and that the Bolsheviks were imposing an authoritarian and bureaucratic model on the international workers' movement. He refused to remain at the congress and argued for a complete break with the Third International. This stance put him at odds with the KAPD leadership, which still hoped to fight for its positions within the Comintern, and he was expelled from the KAPD in December 1920. From this point on, Rühle became a leading theorist of a council communism that was explicitly anti-party and anti-union. He collaborated with Franz Pfemfert and the journal Die Aktion and was a key figure in the Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union – Einheitsorganisation (AAU-E), an organisation that attempted to unite political and economic struggle outside of the traditional party and trade union forms.
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