“Socialist commerce” was a contradiction in terms, just like “socialist philosophy.” The ancient trade that kept people and goods moving implied individual will, initiative, and intelligence. State commerce, on the other hand, since all businesses belonged to the state and operated on a strictly planned basis, required only bureaucracy, regular

There is an image of nature in the analogon of biomimicry. Nature is passive. Meekly it inherits corporate interest. Where yesterday industry adopted models, today the technocracy imports biological fieldwork. We are to have a social ecology and, in the sympathetic magic of association, sustainably grow interests. The corpse totalises.

The discourse of the Whigs is cloven like a devil’s hoof. – Neal Stephenson, The System of the World,Vol. III of The Baroque Cycle, Harper Perennial, New York, 2005, p. 203