Page "Justification for the state" Paragraph 1

There is no single, universally accepted justification of the state.

In fact, anarchists believe that there is no justification for the state at all, and that human societies would be better off without it.

However, most political ideologies have their own justifications, and thus their own vision of what constitutes a legitimate state.

Indeed, a person's opinions regarding the role of government often determine the rest of their political ideology.

Thus, discrepancy of opinion in a wide array of political matters is often directly traceable back to a discrepancy of opinion in the justification for the state.