It obviously does have stages that progress towards each other, and the reason it progresses in a certain way is due to mechanics of the system. It’s not backsliding towards anything, it’s evolving under the selection pressures encoded in its rules. Incidentally, this is what the game of monopoly illustrates. Everybody starts on even footing and over time, through competition, all the capital accumulates with a single player. This happens regardless how many times you play the game.

It’ intellectually lazy to think that feudalism just magically reasserts itself without thinking about the process that leads to capitalism turning back into feudalism.