Re: Does capitalism really need growth to survive?

["Forstater, Mathew" <ForstaterM@xxxxxxxx>]

A lot of Marxist economics emphasizes the impossibility of a no growth
capitalism.  "Accumulate, accumulate, that is Moses and the prophets!"
"Accumulate or die!"

If you are interested in the intersection of this Marxist notion and
environmental sustainability, there is a decent edited book collection
called "Is Capitalism Sustainable?" and an article a few years back in
Rethinking Marxism called "Grow or Die."

Georgescu-Roegen, who was one of the key economists to argue that
economies operate in the physical world and therefore must obey the laws
of thermodynamics, actually did not agree with his student, Herman Daly,
who popularized the "steady-state economics" (here meaning what the old
classical economists called the "stationary state" and not what modern
growth theory means by a steady-state.).  Georgescu-Roegen argued, I
believe that a no growth system is impossible, not because the economy
must grow, but because he believed the 2nd (entropy) law means that the
only possible system is a shrinking one!