All states are lethal by definition. Max Weber knew this, and in a 1918 speech to law students in Germany, “Politics as a Vocation,” he detailed this recognition by way of a definition. Assuring his audience that his lecture would disappoint them, he first announced that politics should be understood as the leadership of a political association, “hence today, of a state.” Hewing firmly to a sociological point of view, he eliminated the consideration of ends or goals in his definition of a state, because different states historically have had different ends. What defines a state for Weber is its means, and the means specific to all states is the use of physical force. Weber approvingly quotes Leon Trotsky to introduce this sociological definition of the state: “‘Every state is founded on force,’ said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right” (78). Weber then provides two quick definitions of the state. The first defines the state as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (78).