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There's one of those generic writing rules around that says something about every story needing conflict. A less commonly seen rule is that every story needs to gain the reader's empathy. Villains have simply been the most common way of achieving these ends. They produce conflict by their very nature, and the hero's plight against such villainy produces empathy.
If you can achieve the sames ends while still retaining a more realistic view of the world - that villainy is often a matter of perspective - then so much the better (it seems to me). I imagine a children's story is likely to have a tidy resolution to such conflict, which is perhaps less realistic (people are rarely that forgiving), but provides a nice and optimistic moral.
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