Barth in his Ethics, having raised the question of war as the actualization of a nations will to live, moves on to the individual. Though we may not be actively killing each other, all our various strivings in life are ethically questionable.
"I cannot live without striving. I cannot strive without it some way competing. I cannot compete in the serious competition of life without restricting the life of another, without impairing it in its movement, without stealing a march on it, and therefore without entering on that sharply inclined plane at the end of which man is the butcher of man.... As I live for myself, I necessarily live against others. In this action of mine, however, I am answerable to the command of respect for the life of others.We should have to drain the ocean dry if we were to describe the questioning of our action by the command with anything even approximating to completeness. Some hints may suffice at this point- hints that show we cannot really hide from the question of command, that we have to wrestle with the posing of this question at every step."
Barth "Ethics" T&T Clark Edinburgh 1981, 162-63
Barth leaves us with very little room to hide.
Firstly we cannot hide in naivity, that we simply did not know that our lifestyle impinged on others. Ethics doesn't quetion our intentions but our actions.
Secondly, even if we know what we are doing, we have have a nasty habit of obscuring the real violence of our living behind a complex web of relations
"When members of the white race enjoy every possible intellectual and material advantage on the basis of the superiority of one race and the subjection of many other races, and of the use that for centuries our race has made of both, I myself may not have harmed a single hair on the heads of Africans or indians. I may be very friendly toward them. I may be a supporter of missions. Yet I am still a member of the white race which, as a whole, has obviously used very radically the possibility of appropriation in relation to them. My share in the sin against Africa and Asia for the last hundred or fifty years may be very remote or indirect, but would Europe be what it is, and would I be what I am, if that expansion had never happened? Our ecenomic life clearly needs a whole series of delegated relations which apparently- only apparently- allow the individual to watch the struggle for life in the harmless role of the spectator, and even, it may be, in the very satisfying role of an actively critical spectator... But we cannot get away with the irresponsibility of this indirect grasping and taking. Again the law of God does not ask how close or distant our participation is" 164-65
Thirdly we do not absolve ourselves if our competing is part of a collective egoism, rather than simply an individual one. A bad action doesn't become good simply because it is done by a group. I am answerable for what my country does. Even in a difficult situation where I may oppose the country and simply look after my own family.
"The family is, of course, the mighty fortress of middle class morality which can easily unite a touching loyalty and concern for those in one's own nest with the laissez-faire of ruthless capitalism." 166
Barth has no time for socialism either, that simply opposes one collective egoism, the middle class, with another, the labour movement.
Fourthly, even as christians, acting for the gospel, our good intentions don't spare us from the command.
" Wherever there is a struggle between man and man, we are in this arena. This is not in itself forbidden. We cannot leave the arena. But it is fit that we should make only very circumspect use of the christian flag in this arena, for at the smallest step we take the danger is very great that we shall at least compromise severely the Christian name, and, in any case, Christ will triumph in spite of our Christian flagwaving and not by means of it".
Fifthly,
the fact that our existence takes place in certain generally recognized forms of tradition or rules will not absolve us.
While the rule of law is necessary, even good, we should be careful of over estimating things like the concept of personal property. His general point is that legal landholders can be, and indeed are often, the worst theives of all. The only way you are an ethical owner is because God has given you the land, and he may well give it to someone else. Again, the division of labour,a necessary thing so that all tasks are done, doesn't absolve the more privelleged from listening to the complaints of those under them.
Nor will any principle of recompense do, where I can claim that I have what I have due to being better and behaving more dilligently. Barth has a crack at puritans and America
"what still seems to be overlooked by the great majority of American- and not just American- Christians today, is that a morality which has practical success as its reward could finally be one which also makes this reward its goal.... We might well have been all the more guilty of cruelty and injustice in putting others under the wheels on which we so merrily rolled, even though we did smear those wheels with the oil of morality and Christianity" 170
And finally Barth turns to technology, which at first glance (to Barth) seems to have nothing to do with our struggle with others.
"Even the finest inventions become really interesting only when industry, and through industry the banks, become interested in them... not to mention the fact that the last war made it clear to us that the wonderful world of human technology can in an instant, if need be, transformed into a veritable hell of instruments of slaughter" 171
Nor is the ivory tower of scholarship, even philosophy and theology, breathing clean air in this respect.
Even our own love comes under judgement
"Is not love as such, apart from the means it may have to use, exempt from the law of struggle of all against all and therefore from the responsibility which we have to shoulder in this struggle? May there not be seen here in the world of ambiguity, of unbounded questionability, in which we normally live, a world of purity and therefore of innocence that needs no justification? Yes, we may say, if we really dare to claim that our love is real love, if we really know an actualization of love in which there is no grasping, taking, and ruling, in which there is no forcing of the one who is loved by the one who loves, if we really know a love in which no pain is caused, no pressure exerted, no burden imposed, no mastery enforced, in which the other is truly sought and not the self. It is true that love is not judged. But who of us has and practices the love which is not judged?" 172-73
"Why does the exercise of Christian love so seldom make any different impression on the world, and not just the wicked world, than that of a particular expression of the Christian will to power? We should not forget that the love of which Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 is an eschatological possibility and that in 1 John God is called love. If love is to justify us in the judgement, then it will not be the love that we have produced and demonstrated and proved, but the love which we can understand only as the love ascribed to us by God. In this love it may be that the command for respect for life is really kept and fulfilled by us even though, twist and turn as we like, we can understand ourselves only as its transgressors" 173.
