Lenin on Civil War: Class Struggle and Revolution as Instances of Civil War

Civil war is a quite recurrent theme in several academic disciplines, from Political Science to Philosophy. The war of “brother against brother” has filled the imaginary of both academics and the general public, as it manifested itself as a recurrent and relatively common phenomenon. In this essay, I propose a genealogical study of Lenin’s concept of revolution as an instance of civil war, with a special focus on the relationship between Lenin’s thought and the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. I will pay particular attention to The State and Revolution as an idiosyncratic example of Lenin’s writings regarding the role of the masses in the revolutionary process. In this work, the role of the revolutionary proletariat in the achievement and maintenance of the socialist state, the exertion of post-revolutionary power and the creation of new social structures are thoroughly studied.