>>66891
Sure it's possible not to have a state, at least when you define it similar to Oppenheimer: As the "organization of the political means", the political means being coercion, as opposed to economic means, voluntary exchange and association.
What you cannot eliminate are hierarchy and leadership, but you can make them non-coercive. Spiritual and religious leaders can do their job just fine without resorting to coercion at all, moral or intellectual authorities likewise, economic enterprises are per se non-coercive, and any fraternal societies, likewise, can do just fine using only economic means to achieve their objectives.
>In a stateless society, how does one prevent the accumulation of power in such a way that it preserves their liberty and yet all at the same time prevents the "gestalt" from emerging?
The less power you start out with, and the more decentralized that power is, the harder it is to acquire more and to threaten the system of freedom itself. Of course, there's no guarantee it won't happen at all, but that's because history itself isn't static. Under optimal conditions, I could imagine an anarchocapitalist society lasting for several hundred years before it became as statist as what we have now. The Icelandic Commonwealth lasted for over two hundred years and as far as decentralization of power and private law enforcement goes, it's pretty close to anarchocapitalism.