Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung
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losing the consciousness of solidarity because of personal isolation and the loss of reflection and feeling. This means a smashing of the worker’s stance, of the worker’s will to resistance, and of the worker’s will to the self-organization of the proletariat.
There is another example: Barth’s no to the so-called yellow worker organization, which was promoted as a strike-breaking organization by entrepreneurs, which would create agitation among the workers against the class struggle and would work for peaceful negotiation for the sake of employers. In confrontation with such organizations, Barth argued with the concepts of Marxist political economy and notices:
But the socialists have not created yet the class contrast. It is the product of present economic order: “Free” work contract on the basis of private property to the means of production. Through this order a part of society is made principally dependent and practically exploited. The class struggle, i.e. the fight for the power of the worker class aims at the overcoming of such contradiction, i.e. the peace. There is no other peace than that of the new order of relation for one who is in earnest with the healing of the worker’s stance.218
Here Barth specifies the concept of worker: “‘Worker’ in a general sense is every well-behaved human. Herein is it meant: the worker who stands in service and wage of industrial enterprise”—also the wage worker. Its special feature Barth defines with the description of its labor relation.
The worker is without possessions, i.e., for subsistence he is dependent upon the employer, who through the labor contract with the worker acquires and pays for labor power. The employer is . . . qualified for this contract as the possessor of the means of production (factories, machines, raw material) and therefore of production profit. Labor contract: An obligation between two opponents with equal rights, seemingly very clear and fair, in reality, a sequence of disadvantage follows on the part of worker. (a) The worker is dependent upon the labor contract for his survival, while the employer can live on property, pension, or labor. (Marginal note: “on the one hand a question of life, on the other hand a business interest!”).” (b) The worker engages his person in labor contract; the employer engages (and risks) only his belongings. (c) The worker cannot restrict his ‘production’ (labor supply), without going into the ruin, while every other production can be restricted. If the wage decreases, he must work longer and more intensely. (. . . ‘Demand and supply determine the wages here and elsewhere . . . We buy the labor on the cheapest market. If a man is not satisfied with his wage or relations, under which he works, he can leave. Against this nothing can be said).219
As Barth comments, the ruling classes
regard it as a matter of course that the worker finds himself/herself in his/her place determined by “free” labor contract. In a misunderstood interpretation of the Christian concept of subordination one mistakes superiority of the employer (which is based on capital possession) for divine order, rebellion against it for “indignation,” “overthrowing,” etc. The attitude toward strike, therefore, is typical of state and society (‘laziness,’ disturbance of economic life, exception law). For the worker the most necessary should be good enough, while one draws no border line to enrichment of employers. The welfare of industry becomes one-sidedly identified with the gain of employer (factory law). The risk of the employer is estimated morally very highly, while the well-being and the risk (crisis, accidents) of the worker stands in the second line at any rate.220
In March 1915 a conflict occurred within the church board when a request was made for financial support for a military newspaper, “A Good Defense and Weapon,” which was published by an evangelical church organization. When the president of the board moved to approve a sum of 10 francs from the budget, Barth took a position against such a patriotic-military Christianity. According to Barth, there could be no question of patriotic-military Christianity in the church. “Hüssy held, on the contrary, that one needed to put himself in the position of the soldier, and from that vantage point would gladly have such material created for him.”221
Barth delivered his first lecture (“War, Socialism, and Christianity”) as a new party member on February 14, 1915 in Zofingen. In calling for the reformation of Christianity and socialism, Barth argued that “A real Christian must become a socialist (if he is to be in earnest about the reformation of Christianity!). A real socialist must be a Christian if he is in earnest about the reformation of socialism.”222 Barth was asked frequently how he could deal with the external and internal relation of religion and socialism, or church and socialism. To what extent could he serve as a pastor and at the same time as a practicing socialist? In a lecture addressing “Religion and Socialism” in December 1915, Barth clarified the reason for his socialistic cause in a rather confessional tone:
I have become a socialist in a very simple way, and I live socialism in a very simple way. Because I would like to believe in God and God’s kingdom, I place myself at the point where I see something of God’s kingdom break through. . . . I think I can see the mistakes of socialism and its proponents very clearly. But much more clearly I see in the grounding thought, in the essential endeavor of socialism, a revelation of God which I must recognize before all and about which I must be delighted. The new society, which is based on the foundation of community and justice, instead of capriciousness and the law of the jungle, the new order of work in the sense of common activity of all for all instead of in the sense of exploitation through egotism of the individual, the new connection of humans as humans over the barrier of class and nations . . . finally the way to this goal: the simple brotherhood and solidarity [that appear] first among the poor and underprivileged of all countries—I must recognize all these new [features], which socialism brings it into political and economic life, as something new from God’s side. . . . Socialism—despite its imperfections, which people should discuss calmly and openly—is for me one of the most gratifying signs for the fact that God’s kingdom does not stand still, that God is at work, and hence I may not and cannot stand against it indifferently. . . . From the sentiment of duty, that tells me: this is where you belong, if you take God in earnest. Through my membership in the Social Democratic Party I believe to confess a very important point in complete plainness to myself and to my parish that God must come to honor. . . . People may cling to religion and still associate themselves with another party or remain without a party. . . . But I cannot find the kingdom of God there, where people again and again make money more important than the human beings, where possession is again and again the scale of all value, where people set the nation over humanity in anxiety and small-mindedness, where people again and again believe more in the present than in the future.223
To overcome compromise or accommodation of Christianity and socialism there was a need for a renewal of the so-called Christian morality and so-called socialist politics. In a lecture, “What Does It Mean to Become a Socialist?” on August 16, 1915, Barth expressed his intention to renew socialism regarding the failure of socialists in the Second International and their wrong collaboration with the War policy. According to Barth,
We would like to become dangerous to the structures, otherwise we may pack up. Hence: “socialist personalities.” As Kautski thinks, is the idea of a socialist personality one that changes the conditions, bourgeois ideology? Against this view Barth writes: “Historical materialism in the sense of Marx does not have the form of merely economic course, but more so the emerging independent of the living human over against matter. Within the circumstances and transcending them, the human wants to rise up. The relation is that of the interrelation. The ideals may be an illusory bubble of economic development; but the human is the most real and stands above economy. That has been overlooked and there was a lack of depth in socialist praxis (not by the founders of socialism, cf. Engels).” “Not: first better humans, then better situation. Not: first better situation, then better humans. Both of them together and interwoven—we need human beings,