The Thessaloniki Chalk Circle should be resolved in favour of the workers of VioMe!
The DIP, the Revolutionary Workers’ Party of Turkey, extends its deepest sympathy and solidarity to the workers’ collective of VioMe, fighting to sustain the work they have been so honourably doing for the last two years, i.e. running a factory on the basis of self-management with equality of rights for all workers involved and workers’ democracy embodied in the sovereignty of the general assembly of the workers of VioMe.
The claim by the previous owners of the factory, the Fillipou family, coming as it does after having abandoned the factory for so long, creates a 21st century replica of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Caucasian Chalk Circle. The workers of VioMe have kept the factory alive and running for all these years while this capitalist family was nowhere to be seen. The workers are like the maid in Brecht’s play, who looks after the child of the Governor’s wife while she is trying to save her own skin without any regard for the child she has given birth to. The Governor’s wife eventually comes back to sue the maid in order to get the child back. The judge draws a circle of chalk and asks both the Governor’s wife and the maid to pull the child. Whoever manages to snatch the child will get to take him away. As the maid cannot bring herself to hurt the child, she lets go. Seeing this manifestation of affection, the court decides in favour of the maid.
Whoever nurtures the child deserves to be the mother and whoever nurtures the means of production deserves to own it! Let the VioMe workers carry on with their exemplary practice of self-management!
Of course, the case in the Greek bourgeois court is no Brecht play and there is a threat hanging over the fate of the workers of the self-managed VioMe factory. We are totally against the formalistic bourgeois right to private property possibly to be re-imposed by the court on the workers of VioMe. They are the ones who have given life to the factory. Let them be its rightful owners!
Long live the self-managed VioMe factory!
Long live proletarian internationalist solidarity!
Long live the fraternity of Greek and Turkish workers!
