 Anderson’s moral and political thought was strongly influenced by the writings of the French socialist Georges Sorel (and before him the libertarian socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon). Although Anderson abandoned communism and socialism as movements whose time had passed, the influence of these thinkers for whom socialism was a moral movement remained with him (Cole 2009). In all fields of human activity, there is a conflict between what Sorel described as the “ethic of the producer”, characterised by spontaneous and cooperative endeavour, and the ethic of the consumer, characterised by an instrumental morality of reward and punishment, obligation and expectation, an ethic most perfectly suited in sociological terms to the marketplace (and in purely psychological terms to the compulsive obligations of the neurotic personality). More accurately, for Anderson, the ethic of the consumer is an ethic without a theme. In history there are classical periods of cultural achievement in contrast with periods in which we struggle to find a theme at all; that is, periods in which nothing really happens, nothing develops from within. Anderson also admired Vico’s cyclical view of history and by the 1940s had not only resigned himself to the collapse of heroic 19th century socialism, but discerned in the era of post-war optimism and state planning the early stages of one of Vico’s periods of barbarism (EMP, 290). More positively, for Anderson the rejection of all totalising views, the thesis that “no formula covers all things”, has the practical consequence of supporting and encouraging “a life of responsibility and adventure” for those prepared to face the situation (EMP, 86).