So – about the rules. Anarchists can have as many as they like – so we’d still have rules of the road and all of that. The point is that we internalise the rules – we choose them for ourselves. Rules of the road are a really good example because it’s arbitrary whether we all drive on the left or the right, but we need to make sure we all do the same thing, so we come to a consensus because it’s in everyone’s best interests, then we stick to it to avoud head on collisions.

I think morality is not like that, I think there is moral right and wrong – and I really, really get your reservations here coz I share them. The optimistic anarchist says that humans have an innate morality that has shrivelled up coz we are used to the state deciding everything for us, and without the state we’d have chance to exercise our moral faculties and then, bingo, perfect society. But there would be an awful mess as we transition from state to no state. To quote Dudley Knowles again: if we didn’t have the state we’d never invent it, but now we’ve got it we can’t see how to do without it.