base work a year prior to his entrance to the party. From several places in the text one can discern that Barth has also formed this writing for an oral lecture. It is uncertain whether he used it already in the winter of 1913/14 in Safenwil or in Aargau. Our knowledge of this occasion is from his letter exchange with Thurneysen on January 1, 1916, in which he states that he has “made full use of” this dossier “with local workers” “every Tuesday” at the end of 1915. “I make it without enthusiasm, simply because it is necessary.” This writing on “Workers Question is an indication of the degree to which Barth understands the worker’s question in a socialistic perspective.217
Two texts without information on the time of formation consist of data and notices regarding the history of two important industry plants: the firm C. F. Bally in Schönenward, and Sulzer Brothers in Winterthur. Barth was interested in the family history of the firm owners, the technological development of their businesses, the social conditions of their companies, and also the religious self-understanding of these industry owners. It is not clear so far whether what is represented here are excerpts from the present history of the company or independent data collections of Barth. Barth’s intended use of the information can certainly be surmised. Through the collection of information Barth is concerned about the life circumstances and living conditions of his parish members and comrades. Because the two enterprises offer examples of the social conscience of certain capitalists, it is also conceivable that these texts could have been materials for the great dossier.
This work is especially interesting because it documents a way of working, namely via empirical analysis. Barth worked with hardly accessible statistical material: wage and price scales, “household [income] calculations of workers,” statistics of working hours, paragraphs of labor law in various countries, Youth labor statistics, statistics about profit and receipts, insurance statements, records of bank dividends, a report of occupational hazards (from a tobacco worker), statistics about accidents, about women in the labor force (different from Swiss cantons), about money devaluation, about the cost of business middlemen, about age structure in industry, about the housing situation, about overpopulation in living space, and about vacation time. Here we see some discussions important for Barth’s holistic perspective, such as his critique of the so-called scientific management, the Taylor system, through which nourishment, motion, and timing of the worker as a human time machine should be regulated solely from the standpoint of economic efficiency.
According to Barth, the current labor conditions included an enormous squandering of resources. Every increase in productivity was also for this reason to be welcomed because promotion of production means also progress for humanity under the given circumstances. The sole question for Barth was whether the economic effectiveness of the system operated at the cost of the humanity of the worker, whether the system displaced the “personality,” whether the ideal worker who experienced as few irritants as possible was in fact immeasurably more prone to nervousness and so to workplace accidents, and whether all this was not the quintessence and practical zeal of a through-and-through materialistic worldview. To this, Barth’s answer was unequivocal: as long as the economic principle of effectiveness stands in service to “the system,” i.e., capitalist production, then rationalization does not serve the general progress but only the monetary gain of the shareholder. At the same time, workers experience moral and political oppression, 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
