Time was when communist rule signified the triumph of the working class — and the working class meant factory-workers churning out machines to make machines to make machines. Communists were supposed to liberate workers from the clutches of bloodthirsty capitalists and turn them into owners of factories and into proletarian dictators. It may take them some time to get used to being bosses; they may retain the sour, agitative, violent ways of slaves of capitalism for some time. So a transitional period of socialism was allowed. But, in the end, heroic workers were supposed to take hold of themselves and run factories through voluntary cooperation, without compulsion or supervision.

A visitor to West Bengal would have to look for that kind of worker. Finally, in Howrah, he would find real workers soldering iron rods in petty capitalists’ factories. But their product is unlikely to be a showpiece of high technology; it is more likely to be a gate for an apartment complex. For the one industry that is booming in West Bengal is construction. It is not to be sniffed at; but the demand comes from the bourgeoisie, cement from Madras Cement, and steel from Jindal. The only indigenous element is land — compulsorily acquired by the government from peasants and resold to a developer at a huge profit. Even in his loftiest flights of fancy, Karl Marx would not have called this the triumphant march of communism. The chief minister envisages a change in this depressingly capitalist picture: he wants capitalist industry, not capitalist real estate. Unfortunately, industry too needs land. And forcibly acquiring land for it has caused much shedding of blood and tears. Amongst those upset is the left intellectuals, led by Mr Sumit Sarkar. He has been appalled by the violence wreaked upon peasants and workers by the government with the help of party cadre. Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee justifies this state vigilantism; he believes that forced industrialization is the only way to employ West Bengal’s growing work force.

The doctrinal battles within the red family will continue. They are essentially about what part of communist doctrine to jettison. Mr Sarkar would abandon nothing; Mr Bhattacharjee, a realist who has to run the state, would give up workers’ ownership of the means of production, but keep the primacy of industry that Marx preached. But Marx is as outdated on industry as on public ownership. In his time, manufacture was the driver of advanced economies; today, it is services. As long as workers get productive employment, it does not matter what they produce. And they will get employment if they can compete with workers in other states. The government should invest more in the skills of its people; and the party should shed its militant trade unionism, which makes local workers uncompetitive and keeps investment out of West Bengal. Citu, not the poor peasants of Nandigram, is the greatest enemy of employment.