As for what other conception of states can exist, socialism is pretty cool I think
The fundamental tenet of socialism is the idea of dialectical materialism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism) which basically states that there are two forces engaged in an endless struggle and future state is a result of synthesis of these two.
There's a close relationship between say Engel's dialectics and something like linear logic. However, Engel's third "The law of the negation of the negation" is fundamentally flawed. You provably can't have both adversarial relationships and still allow double negation.