Today in Labor History June 24, 1943: Otto Rühle (1874-1943), German Left communist of the Spartacist League, died in Mexico. Early in his life, Rühle trained and worked a school teacher. He created a socialist Sunday school and criticized traditional school in "Work and Education" (1904), "The Enlightenment of Children About Sexual Matters", (1907), and, "The Proletarian Child" (1911). In 1912, he was elected to the Reichstag as a Social Democrat.
However, he is much more well known for his role as a leader of the Council Communist movement, along with Anton Pannekoek. They opposed the state communism of the Soviet Union and advocated for Workers Councils and Council Democracy. Lenin attacked them in his pamphlet, “Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.” Rühle was also a comrade of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring and very active in the German Revolution. He opposed both World Wars and fascism.
Today in Labor History March 5, 1871: Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was born in Zamosc, Poland. Together with Karl Liebknecht, she helped found the radical Spartacus League in 1916. The Spartacists and other leftwing Council Communists launched an uprising to replace the Social Democratic government with a communist one. Many of the workers obtained arms. They tried, but failed, to get the support of the Navy, which remained neutral in the conflict. However, the Social Democrats got the anti-Communist Freikorps paramilitary to fight for their side. Many of the ultranationalist Freikorps members were suffering from PTSD from WWI. Many went onto to become members of the Nazi Party and served in the SS. The Freikorps had weapons and military equipment leftover from WWI and were able to quash the uprising within a week. Up to 200 people died in the fighting, including 17 Freikorps soldiers. The Social Democrats captured, beat and executed Liebknecht and Luxemburg.