> There’s no denying that capitalism is “grow or die”, but so is socialism. I think it's important to specify about what individual components "grow-or-die" he

> There’s no denying that capitalism is “grow or die”, but so is socialism. I think it's important to specify about what individual components "grow-or-die" here, because I'm having trouble agreeing that capitalism or socialism, as systems, are such. Individual entities in capitalism, embodied in the concept of the firm, are not necessarily grow-or-die. A growing firm has a much easier life, as there is more slack in all parts of the system, and they can be less efficient in their allocation of resources. But a stagnant firm does not necessarily die. An accountant that is growing, or even shrinking, is not doomed to be replaced by another, growing accountant. Large firms can be stagnant for generations without dying. IBM is still around, right? And similarly, even if a firm is growing massively, accumulating capital and collecting surplus value, that doesn't mean that the GDP as a whole is growing, because so many other large firms could be contracting. The question of how the retired class of people eats, and how to distribute resources between younger workers and elder retirees is solvable in many ways, under socialism and under capitalism. Many of China's problems stem from inadequate retirement distribution, despite supposedly being a socialist or communist country. This is why I feel that these discussions are completely pointless, our abstractions are no longer useful for describing the material reality of people. And we get ridiculous articles like the original post here that cod not even provide an adequate definition of capitalism to describe what they are talking about. Its all monks debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, IMHO, pointless discussions disconnected from reality.