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Ben Hall

Sees Price Control Committees
as Answer to Dealers’ Attack

(27 September 1946)


From Labor Action, Vol. 10 No. 40, 7 October 1946, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).


DETROIT, Sept. 27 – The Detroit Retail Meat Merchants Association is circulating a petition among its customers calling for the abolition of OPA control of meat. Unfortunately, many gullible housewives are being taken in by the meat dealers’ propaganda and are signing their own names to take money out of their own pocketbooks.

The association’s propaganda is quite clever. Its petition reads: “OPA vs. Meat on Your Table! We accuse the OPA of bungling the nation’s meat supply and would like to have your opinion.”

What is the OPA guilty of? One main thing: it does not and cannot control prices effectively. It does not and cannot cope with the determined resistance of the meat profiteers!

In effect, the profiteers themselves are saying: “You see, the OPA cannot control us. It cannot force US to sell meat at low prices. Therefore, if you want meat, you had better get rid of price control.”

That is a fine answer ... for the profiteers. But the working class must not and will not accept the ABOLITION of all price control merely because the OPA represents ineffectual price control. No! What we want is effective and aggressive price control instead of timid and vacillating price control.

Prices CAN be controlled and supplies of the goods of life provided. To do it, however, we have to carry out such a program for price control as is advocated by the Workers Party:

Form popular price control committees! Committees must be formed among the packinghouse workers, among the teamsters and railroad workers, among the retail clerks, among consumers and housewives.

These committees can and must control the production of the goods needed by all the people, and they can ensure their distribution at low prices.


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