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