section_path: Theories of state function/Anarchist perspective
section_name: Anarchist perspective
paragraph_text: Anarchist perspective
  
  Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state and hierarchies to be unnecessary and harmful and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy, a self-managed, self-governed society based on voluntary, cooperative institutions.
  
  Anarchists believe that the state is inherently an instrument of domination and repression, no matter who is in control of it. Anarchists note that the state possesses the monopoly on the legal use of violence. Unlike Marxists, anarchists believe that revolutionary seizure of state power should not be a political goal. They believe instead that the state apparatus should be completely dismantled, and an alternative set of social relations created, which are not based on state power at all.
  
  Various Christian anarchists, such as Jacques Ellul, have identified the state and political power as the Beast in the Book of Revelation.