Here is a quote from a post by athanasius, showing where rutherford stood politically. He was ultra liberal. Marxism/communism was the well for liberalism. Research is being done for more details of JFR's life.
I have more information on Rutherford, who started out in politics before getting involved with religion. In 1896 he came within 100 votes of becoming the Democratic candidate for state legistlature representing Cooper County, Missouri. However, he was a Liberal Democrat and he lost the nomination to a more conservative Democrat who went on to win the election in November. Nevertheless, Rutherford worked hard to elect other Democrats and was impressive on the stump. He could talk for hours on complicated issues and still hold the crowds attention. He was very active in local Democratic politics for many years. His last election was 1904. Apparently he was too liberal for his time and so he gave up politics for religion, joining the Watch Tower movement some time in 1906. The official Watch Tower history books give an earlier date for his conversion but they are in error. While it is true that he bought some of Russell's books in 1894 the books didn't really make an impression on him. Russell warned his flock to stay out of politics, but politics were Rutherford's life blood from 1890-1905. When Russell's representative visited Rutherford's hometown in May 1904 to give a talk on THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES, Rutherford was out of town tending to business in Independence, Kansas. I think that Rutherford realized that he was finished in Democratic Party but saw that he could succeed in religion using the backroom tactics he learned in local party politics. This enabled him to outmaneuver Ritchie, Johnson, and others in the fight to succeed Russell.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=14797&site=3