Holding The Price Line

‘Holding the price line’ is good. But what is good is not holding the line by ordinance or physical compulsion. Where the price has risen by reason of greed and conspiracy among sellers, one can understand pains and penalties imposed by the omnipotent State. But when prices have risen on account of what the State has done and is doing according to plan, the thing to do is to look into the causes and amend the errors there. ‘Fair prices’ cannot emanate from the will of an official or group of officials or from the consumer’s estimate of his own purse. The fair price for any article depends on the cost of production and transport and other incidental expenses. The cost of production rises with the rise of the price of raw materials and of the wages of labour employed. There may be vicious circles in operation, but they cannot be cut and put out of action by official fiat or prosecution. A fair price can be evolved only by actual competition among persons engaged in the production. Calculations in secretariat rooms are likely to go all wrong, and more often wrong, by reason of politics than even through ignorance, which, too, is not negligible.

    All the talk about holding the price line will finally lead to rationing and all its annoyances and inefficiencies, and to the great monster, the black market.  Indeed, the black-marketing experts and middlemen, are eagerly looking forward to ‘fair price’ orders and the introduction of rationing. That kind of holding the price line is just what they desire.

     The legitimate and true way to hold the price line is to remove or at least reduce what causes the prices to go up. But the socialist government will not be agreeable to a straightforward diagnosis. For that may mean revising the Plan, loss of prestige, change of policy, confession and possibly abdication.