Blue-blood socialist?

Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned an audience of industrialists and environmentalists at St James's Palace

A SPGB membership application A form will be shortly despatched to Prince Charles

Ooops , perhaps too prematurely , it appears .

Charles said that without "coherent financial incentives and disincentives" we have just 96 months to avert "irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it."

Ah , our monarch in waiting is still mentally bound by the capitalist ideology in seeking within the capitalist system solutions to problems that are inherent to capitalism .

Production today is in the hands of business enterprises, all competing to sell their products at a profit. All of them aim to maximise their profits. This is an economic necessity imposed by the forces of the market. If a business does not make a profit it goes out of business. “Make a profit or die” is the jungle economics that prevails today. Under the competitive pressures of the market businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interest, ignoring wider social or ecological considerations. All they look to is their own balance sheet and in particular the bottom line which shows whether or not they are making a profit.The whole of production, from the materials used to the methods employed to transform them, is distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by uncontrollable market forces which compel decision-makers, however selected and whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder, pollute and waste. Governments do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They can only act within the narrow limits imposed by the profit-driven market system whose rules are “profits first” and “you can’t buck the market”.

Prince Charles is not against the market and is not against profit-making. He imagines that, by firm government action, these can be tamed and prevented from harming the environment. This is an illusion. You can’t impose other priorities on the profit system other than making profits. That’s why our heir to the throne's pleas will fail.

If the environmental crisis is to be solved, the system must go. What is required is action, yes, but political action aimed at replacing this system by a new and different one which will allow us to meet our needs in an environmentally-friendly way. To do this we must control production—the way we interact with the rest of nature .That’s the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature. And it’s the only basis on which we can begin to successfully reverse the degradation of the environment already caused by the profit system.

What Charles should be struggling for is not a change in what he considers the short-comings of capitalism , but a change of society - the abolition of capitalism .