Although greatly inspired by Kutter’s Sie Müssen!, Ragaz was uncomfortable with the social-ethical quietism present in Kutter. Kutter’s conviction was that the church must be first renewed before entering into the social struggle. Rather than restricting himself to the sphere of church, Ragaz was active in the labor movement by joining the Social Democrats. The difference between them led to a conflict within the religious-socialist movement in Switzerland. In contrast to Kutter’s von Gott her (out from God), Ragaz dialectically emphasized the direction zu Gott hin ( toward God) as the free effectiveness of human praxis, which is grounded on the direction von Gott her in a particular way. In Ragaz’s letter to Kutter (on May 9, 1907) we read: “The right of this ‘zu Gott hin’ I’d like to represent generally. It is one of the differences between you and me. The ‘von Gott her’ is certainly right principally and systematically. I also represent it, as far as I can truly represent it.”166
As Barth characterized the difference between them, “Leonhard Ragaz developed what Kutter meant to be a view of the current situation and an interpretation of the signs of the time.” For Ragaz, “the church must regard socialism as a preliminary manifestation of the kingdom of God . . . He made it a true system of ‘Religious Socialism.’”167 The systematic approach of Ragaz was, however, what Barth was hesitant to accept. In seeing the action of God in history, there is a tendency in Ragaz’s theology of history to ideologize the kingdom of God totally as socialism.168
In 1912 there occurred a general strike in Zurich in which Ragaz was active. Again in this matter Kutter broke with Ragaz and retreated from the religious-social movement. During his participation, Ragaz was shocked by the attack of the military upon workers. His later antimilitarist stance, associated with this experience, became a dominant factor for Ragaz’s development of the peace movement. In the same year the Peace Congress of the Socialist International was held at the Münster Cathedral in Basel. Ragaz spoke of God’s work in building up God’s kingdom with unchurched people. However, World War I became a great obstruction and setback for the religious-social movement. Proving the international element of socialism to be an illusion, workers in each country rallied to fight for their fatherlands. International Workers were not united in solidarity but instead came to fight and kill each other in the war. Unlike Kutter, who hoped for a German victory, Ragaz hoped for a German defeat. After 1913 Ragaz was active in the Swiss Social Democratic Party (SPS). During the war, various options were debated for the future of the Party. Lenin exercised a considerable influence among Swiss leftist socialists. Trotsky came to Switzerland, and Ragaz had a stimulating encounter with him, albeit in his anti-Bolshevist stance. Recalling their encounter Trotsky noted that “the Zurich professor Ragaz, a committed Christian, more a theologian with his education and profession” stood on the most extreme left wing of Swiss socialism. Ragaz represented the most radical fighting method against the war and was for the proletarian revolution.169
As Lenin began his socialist activity in Zurich, Bolshevism came into conflict with the religious-social movement. In his article “The Battle against Bolshevism” (“Sozialismus und Gewalt” [1919]), Ragaz saw Bolshevism as a betrayal of socialism. He argued that the socialists must fight against the perversion of socialism.170 Ragaz’s campaign against the entrance of Swiss Socialists into the Communist International was a well-known fact. In Zurich the leftist group of Münzenberg and his Jungburschen followed for years the religious-socialist direction that Ragaz had represented. Ragaz’s influence on the socialist youth organization had not ebbed, so that the socialist youth were impressed by Ragaz’s seriousness and his ethical demand. However, Münzenberg found himself more under the influence of Lenin than under the religious-socialist spirit. Münzenberg was critical of Ragaz’s demand to abandon violence, and charged that “he [Ragaz] preached salvation out of political oppression and exploitation through love.”171
In 1915 much had been discussed about the military and violence. Together with a women’s conference in Bern initiated by Clara Zetkin, the International Socialist Youth Conference during Easter of 1915 was regarded as a prelude to the meeting of the International workers’ movement in the Zimmerwald. Müntzenberg hoped that the Youth organization would make a contribution to the first International Youth organization after the betrayal and collapse of the Second International during the war. “The Youth organizations became in many countries leaders of the whole proletariat, and avant-garde in the fight against the imperialistic and social democratic betrayal.”172 At the International Youth conference in Bern, Münzenberg came into contact for the first time with Bolshevists. Lenin, who remained at his home in Bern, directed Bolshevists by phone behind the scenes. In this conference the Bolshevist thesis was raised: people must exploit the war for the revolutionization of the masses and must not speak about peace too early.173 Ragaz and Lenin never talked to each other, but an indirect dialogue occurred between them over the issue of the question of the revolutionary use of violence. The leader of the Youth organization stood on the side of Lenin by turning away from the religious-socialist approach. Münzenberg wrote, “Lenin saves us from religion.”174
Through Neue Wege, Lenin was aware of the antiwar position in the religious-socialist circle. Lenin reported that a pious philistine declared that it was not bad to turn a weapon against the war agitator, whereas famous Social Democrats such as Kautsky justified the chauvinism scientifically: “Whose voice is it? Our citation is extracted from a journal of a petit-bourgeois Christian democrat, whose journal is published in society of the upright cleric in Zurich.”175 Lenin actually began his attack on Ragaz and his religious socialism before Ragaz came to know about Lenin. Ragaz also reported, “I had no relation with Lenin and was not concerned about him. But Lenin was concerned about me and our movement. Lenin calls us in one Zurich journal ‘tearful social clerics’ who would keep the workers’ association from the use of violence. Obviously we stood in the way for him. The necessity of the violence was for him a dogma.”176 Warning against the danger of Bolshevism as practiced in the Soviet Union, Ragaz himself was confronted with the spirit of Bolshevism. In an article (in Neue Wege in November 1918), Ragaz defined Bolshevism as “Lenin’s dictatorship of the proletariat as practiced in Russia.”177 Lenin acclaimed that the proletariat must break with the bourgeois dictatorship through the dictatorship of the proletariat.178 The meaning of the Bolshevist dictatorship of the proletariat lay in taking away the means of production, the state apparatus, and finally the cultural apparatus, especially the press. This was the way of eliminating ruling violence through revolutionary violence. Only then could the whole economic, social, and cultural apparatus serve socialism in a genuine sense.179
According to Ragaz, Bolshevism from above and Bolshevism from below were no less than a minority rule over majority by holding “a belief in violence rather than justice, in dictatorship rather than democracy, in absolutism rather than freedom, in matter rather than spirit.” For Ragaz, therefore, “Bolshevism is imperialism and militarism in another form.”180 There was only one way to revolution: through a military coup and a military dictatorship evolving from it. But Ragaz did not find the idea of military dictatorship bearable or feasible: “The emergence of socialist militarism after the destruction of capitalistic militarism is