In Die Welt von Gestern, Stefan Zweig attributed the decline of civil order in Europe to the myth of progress.7 In all the ideologies of his day - communism, socialism, Nazism, fascism - Zweig saw the same pernicious attempt to rewrite the principles of social order in terms of a linear progression from past to future. The cult of the leader, of the 'vanguard party', of the 'avant-garde' - all supposed that society has a direction, in the way that businesses have a purpose and armies have a goal. And all licensed the increasing conscription of the citizen, and the steady absorption of the functions of society into the machinery of the state.