In November 2017, Russia was in chaos. There were food and fuel shortages, social agitation, rising inflation, a weak government that didn´t have full control, and the country was still engaged in World War I; Russian armies had suffered enormous casualties at the hands of the Germans. Several large units had rebelled against central command and were refusing to fight. So the priorities of Lenin were two: to win the immediate allegiance of workers and peasants by declaring the abolition of private property and the redistribution of land among the peasantry (Decree on Land), and to disentangle Russia from the War (Decree on Peace).
In his book, Lenin argues that the state is an organized form of violence that aims at supressing some classes. The state is an instrument of domination and control by the ruling class. The proletarian revolution must be violent and destroy the old bourgeois state that opresses workers.
