Crisis without Collapse: A Theory of Capitalist Persistence

The terminal crisis of capitalism has been predicted regularly since 1848. It has not occurred. We treat this 175-year forecasting record as a stylized fact in need of a model, and we supply one, unifying results from adaptive systems, mechanism design and computational complexity, behavioral decision theory, global games, and the political economy of redistribution. Ten assumptions deliver twelve formal results and one theorem. Recurring shock classes have geometrically decaying collapse hazards: within the banking class alone, the lag from systemic failure to a system-wide deposit backstop fell from 816 days (1930-33) to 18 days (2008) to 2 days (2023). A centralized replacement of the price mechanism fails on at least one of two horns, computation or truthful input, and we are explicit about which horn survives modern algorithms. We derive Davies's J-curve from cumulative prospect theory together with a new result: the revolutionary window closes endogenously, with length inversely proportional to the speed of hedonic adaptation, roughly four to nine years at calibrated parameters, and with its perceptibility threshold derived from the participation constraint rather than assumed. Personalized media shift protest games, in the model, into the unique no-attack equilibrium of a global game. Redistribution is a dial, not an identity: countries with market Ginis of 0.505-0.512 sustain disposable Ginis from 0.273 to 0.395. We state seven testable predictions and six falsification conditions, and map which assumption each rival school must deny.