Social systems like those of authoritarian collectivism, which constitute a multifaceted civilization and enjoy long-term existence, all have a genesis, exist for a good while – in this case decades – and eventually disappear. Marx ([1867] 1962; [1894] 1964) pointed to capitalism's historical developmental trends – its ‘laws of movement’ – and the mechanisms that presided over them: original accumulation, evolution towards the concentration and centralization of capital and simplification of the class structure as well as, eventually, he believed, the expropriation of the expropriators with the proletarian socialist revolution. Other trends were related to the falling rate of profit and capitalism’s stagnation – or collapse (Zusammenbruch), as Engels and some others read it. The political dimension of modernity – together with capitalism a central component of modern civilization – can be framed according to the same sort of developmental process and mechanisms, implying the strengthening of the state and the political autonomization of individuals (Domingues 2019a, chs 5–6). Can we say the same about authoritarian collectivism? As already observed above, Marcuse (1958, 86–90, 265–67) suggested that the tension between, on the one hand, the emancipatory elements harboured in Marxism, which were present in the ritualized ‘Aesopian’ language of Soviet Marxism and furnished the ideological linchpin of oppression, and the actual repressive and unequal nature and workings of the whole system on the other, might have eventually proven fatal to it and led to socialism. This did not happen, at least certainly not to the extent necessary and eventually not in a direction which enhanced freedom while preserving socialism.

When the Soviet Union left its satellite states in Eastern Europe, which were much more unstable and were already actually starting to shed the motherland of socialism's model, to their own devices, they quickly turned back to capitalism and traditional forms of the modern liberal state (the latter came about in Russia only very partially, though). Other countries, where the ruling nomenklatura had no intention of following in Gorbachev's footsteps and exiting from history, some of which were already trying to adapt, decided to keep their political systems and political regimes, while at the same time embracing a sort of state capitalism (see Nolan 1995; Anderson 2010). This seemed the only way to avoid extinction.