Marx saw historical progress as inherently contradictory and destructive

Evidence

Marx did not, of course, restrict himself to celebrating the produc­ tive achievements of capitalism. He described what he believed to be the capitalist modernization of India under British rule, which he argued was historically necessary, as an instance of a kind of progress which ‘resemble[s] the hideous pagan idol, who will not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain’. Historical development is for Marx a contradictory and not a unilinear process. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 165

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core reading purpose: Marx’s dialectical conception of progress as against unilinear modernization narratives that Jameson-style postmodernism flattens.