[lbo-talk] the state (was: WBAI scores with holocaust denalist's premium)

[Jim Devine]

> Really? Weber got this from Trotsky? Peter, take note! ;)

paragraph 4 of "Politics as a Vocation":

"Every state is founded on force" said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk.

That indeed is right. If no social institutions existed which knew the
use of violence, the concept of "state" would be eliminated, and a
condition would emerge that could be designated as "anarchy" in the
specific sense of this word.

Of course, force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the
state - nobody says that - but force is a means specific to the state.

Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially
intimate one. In the past the most varied institutions - beginning
with the sib - have known the use of physical force as quite normal.

Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that
(successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical
force within a given territory. Note that "territory" is one of the
characteristics of the state.

http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/xweb.htm 

At Brest-Litovsk, Leon Trotsky, commander of the Soviet Red Army,
negotiated peace with Germany, withdrawing Russia from the war. In the
course of negotiations, on 14.1.1918, German General Hoffmann
complained that the soviet government was supported by force. Trotsky
replied that "in a society based on classes every government rests on
force. The only difference was that General Hoffmann applied
repression to protect big property-owners, whereas we did it in
defense of the workers".

http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/sshtim.htm#1918 

Trotsky's statement comes straight out of standard Marxian theory. 

-- 
Jim Devine
"I am not a Keynesian." -- John Maynard Keynes