It could be given that sort of melodramatic spin, and it might be perversely indicative of real human progress. If things were _really_ getting worse - economy contracting, wealth declining - how would the ancien regime afford the glitter and gilding to deck pride out with? Pride ain't cheap.
Perverse, though, as inequality and social polarization increase as well..into the breach enters - the new ruling class. Now, if only the problem of the "self - dissolving" class and state could be adequately grappled with. So it's back to all of this Machiavelli stuff. Here's a quote from Perry Anderson's Weberian-Marxist days, which appears amidst a veritable frenzy of Machiavelli-bashing in _Lineages of the Absolutist State_ (pp 163-168, Verso 1979):
"But in fact his political theory, apparently so modern in its intention of clinical rationality, significantly lacked any secure, objective concept of the _State_ at all."
Oh my, I feel insecure already! But therein, perhaps, lies a clue to the proletariat's present and future problems, as well as a historical link between "Machiavellianism" and our own needs.