Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung
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of God does not run counter to anarchism, but anarchism comes out of the kingdom of God. Where anarchism stands under the rule of God, there is no master-slave relation in the interpersonal realm. The primary rule of God does not tolerate a secondary dominating form of human over human. Where there is the Sprit of the living God, there occurs a voluntary and domination-free personal community.
In this anarchist principle of a cooperative and federal community Ragaz saw a concrete realization-form within the historical process. Where God rules and is given glory, the traditional structure of dominion and rule can be broken and eliminated. Then a new communal and cooperative order of solidarity must be developed. As Ragaz stresses, “the anarchism of the immediacy under God is the highest form of historical life and of human community.”193
After 1916 the religious-social movement began to decline, in part due to Ragaz’s conflict with Kutter and in part due to his rejection of the dialectical theology of Barth. In his first edition of Romans (1919), Barth, speaking on behalf of Social Democracy, expressed his critique that Ragaz’s religious socialism had limitations. In 1919 at a religious-socialist conference in Tambach, Barth was invited in place of Ragaz, who was unable to speak because of health reasons. Herein Barth dealt a final blow to any kind of hyphenated Christianity in light of totaliter aliter revolution. In the wake of Barth’s commentary on Romans (1919, 1922) and the Tambach lecture (1919), many pastors in Germany and Switzerland left their previous alliance with religious socialism in order to become followers of the dialectical theology of Barth. This remained a bitter experience for Ragaz, who attacked dialectical theology as reactionary, quietistic, antihumanistic and antisocial.
Ragaz sensed that Barth, in his Romans I, initiated his attack on religious socialism. After the publication of Romans I, Ragaz wrote in his diary: “Barth, Römerbrief: That is possibly the strongest attack up to now against me, because it cuts the center. Inspired by Kutter, misusing Blumhardt, full of poison, spitefulness, and arrogance. But so many significant and profound things.”194 Ragaz regarded Barth as turning away from the religious-socialist movement at three levels: 1) the religious-socialist message was theologized, so that it led to a new orthodoxy; 2) it was reduced to a churchly sphere (ecclesiologized) with the consequence of a new clericalism; and 3) it was reduced to Paulinism, that is, in Barth’s Römerbrief, Paul’s epistle to the Romans retained primacy over Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.195
In 1921 Ragaz published an anthology of writings of the two Blumhardts with his own commentary, Der Kampf um das Reich Gottes in Blumhardt, Vater und Sohn—und weiter! In the same year Ragaz made an important decision to commit to the labor movement. By abandoning his teaching position on the theological faculty in Zurich, he moved into a predominantly working-class section of Zurich, Aussersihil, where he built up an educational center for the poor. He spent the rest of his life working at this center and editing the journal Neue Wege. In his struggle for peace and against the power of militarism, Ragaz became a pacifist and a supporter of the League of Nations.196
Karl Barth and Eduard Thurneysen in the Midst of the World War I and Socialism
The Situation of Social Democracy in Switzerland
The period of the Second International (1889–1914) cannot be simply identified with the Marxist movement. Many sources of European socialism had influenced the ideology and movement of the socialist parties that belonged to the International. For instance, there was a tradition of Lassalleanism in Germany, Proudhonism and Blanquism in France, and anarchism in Italy. Although Marxism stood out as the dominant ideology of the workers’ movement and proletariat, this was not the ideological center of the Second International. This International can be understood as an assemblage of socialist parties from different backgrounds representing the masses and various workers’ movements.197
The philosophical texts of Karl Marx such as the Paris Manuscripts of 1844 and The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right remained unpublished until the 1930s. One group, which viewed Marxism as a theory of social development and progress out of capitalistic society and its inevitable and necessary collapse, tried to combine and complement the philosophical ethics of Kant with a historical materialism. This is the classic way of neo-Kantian Marxism dominant in figures such as Cohen, Natorp, and Voländer.
In the socialism of the Second International we notice that there was a struggle against anarchism and revisionism, and a conflict between Social Democrats and left-wing groups after the Russian Revolution of 1905. When Barth joined the Swiss Socialist Party in 1915, this party was still radical in its progressive orientation because it did not split into communist and revisionist wings until the Zimmerwald conference. No doubt the German Social Democracy was dominant in the Second International. Lassalle’s party (founded in 1863) gained considerable support among the workers. A new party, the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei was organized in 1869 at Eisenach under the leadership of August Bebel (1840–1913) and Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900).
In 1875 the Lassalle and Eisennach parties were united at Gotha to form the Socialist Worker’s party. However, the Gotha Program, which was a compromise between Marxism and Lassalle’s revisionist orientation, was severely criticized by Marx himself. In 1878 Bismarck enacted an emergency law prohibiting socialist meetings and publication, under the pretext of forbidding an environment that could cause an attack on the emperor’s life. The local party organization was dissolved, and many party leaders were forced to emigrate. The crucial issue in the first phase of the International was controversy with the anarchists. In the early 1880s an anarchist association (the Alliance Internationale Ouvriere) came into being; Kropotkin, Malatesta, and Elisee Reclus were included in this group. According to Marx, socialism would restore human individual life in all its fullness, remove political organisms, and thus replace institutionalized oppressive forms of social organization and community with a direct association of individuals.
However, this vision was based on reorganizing civil society in terms of technique and the organization of labor that was already created in the capitalist world rather than on a liquidation of the existing institutional forms. Marx held that the overthrowing of the state and political authority did not mean the destruction of social and industrial organization. The socialization of property would prevent society from degenerating into an apparatus of violence based on injustice and inequality. However, according to anarchists, the aptitude of human beings for friendly cooperation would prevent all injustice, once the institutions of dictatorship and tyranny were liquidated. In opposition to Darwinism, Kropotkin argued for human aid and cooperation, in that the natural inclinations of individuals would ensure the harmony of society. Therefore, the anarchists made attacks on Marxist socialism as a new form of tyranny to replace bourgeois society.198
The last years of the Second International were overwhelmed by the war issue. The question was closely related to nationalism and self-determination. The International had condemned militarism at Brussels in 1891 and at London in 1896. If a war broke out, a large part of the proletariat was to be mobilized and thus fall into the general slaughter. If necessary, they allowed for the possibility of rebellion. However, if the fatherland was attacked, they argued it is the duty of socialists to take part in the defense. The call to strike and rebel was within the reformist policy. The left wing (including Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Liebknecht) put forward a more radical position: In the case of the outbreak of war, no attempt must be made to stop it; rather the war must be used to overthrow the capitalist system. At the Basel Congress in 1912—while the First Balkan War was breaking out—an antiwar resolution was passed. The delegates dispersed with the slogan “war on war” and in the conviction that the socialist movement was strong enough to prevent the danger of the imperialist war.
The collapse of the International occurred in the face of the 1914 war. German social democrats surrendered to the fatherland’s call to arms. The great majority of socialists