Though it almost always failed, it only had to succeed once. Where it couldn't be escaped, communities ran away, but eventually, it covered the world. The abolition of Civilization, and a return to communities of free human beings, has always been possible. There were revolutionary uprisings in 1st century Rome, 4th century Persia and 16th century Germany, in the 19th and 20th centuries and at numerous other times. Leviathans have a continual struggle to keep going, and most fall apart.
Progress is the result of a disruption of cyclical time.
Our struggle reasserts invariant, cyclical time against progressive, linear time. Against His-story completely overturned the old productivist vision. Revolutionaries today, for example the authors of Wildcat and Green Anarchist , don't oppose the way technology is used by capitalism. We don't urge the working class to set up workers' councils to manage production. Our ancestors never worked.