“Planøkonomi i mælkehandelen”

The 20th Century saw a series of interventions in the free market by the labour movement: the trade union's wage struggles, the co-operative's effort to provide cheap and better food and housing and the emerging redistributive welfare system in which the state provided social and economic security. This article focuses on one such intervention, namely the municipal Greater Copenhagen milk scheme, which was active between 1940 and 1971. In most cases, the emerging welfare state market interventions did not intervene directly with the property relations of commodity production and distribution. as such, the milk scheme, which was developed in the capital metropolis, was a rare intervention in the otherwise inviolable industrial property right, which shows us that milk was considered an important stable in people’s diet. Aiming to reduce the expenses of milk and dairy products to adjust them to low income and high food expenses among wage earners, the Greater Copenhagen milk scheme forced drastic reductions in the number of companies that processed and sold milk. Thre result was reduced processing costs, which in turn allowed for lower milk prices, making milk much cheaper than other foodstuffs.