". . . the idea that an authoritarian political system must collapse because it cannot provide a decent life for its citizenry can only occur to a democrat. When we reason this way about the Soviet empire, we are simply ascribing democracy's operational rules and attitudes to a totalitarian regime. But these rules and attitudes are signally abnormal, and, as I said earlier, very recent and probably transitory. The notion that whoever holds political power must clear out because his subjects are discontented or dying of hunger or distress is a bit of whimsy that history has tolerated few times in real life. Although they are forced by the current fashion to pay lip service to this cumbersome idea, nine out of ten of today's leaders are careful not to put it into practice; they even indulge themselves in the luxury of accusing the only true democracies now functioning of constantly violating the precept. But then, how could totalitarian rulers break a social contract they've never signed?
"As things stand, relatively minor causes of discontent corrode, disturb, unsettle, paralyze the democracies faster and more deeply than horrendous famine and constant poverty do the Communist regimes . . ."
Jean Francois Revel, How Democracies Perish.
Most of the ancient writers on political science believed that cycles were inevitable. Societies grow, flourish, and decay, as do most other organisms. Some societies last longer than others, but all are doomed to eventual collapse.
This view was accepted well into the Renaissance and after. The notion of progress, of continual growth and improvement, onward and upward per omnia seculae seculorum, is quite recent.
It is also unproved.