Supporting West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's stand on capitalism, Communist Party of India-Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu on Friday said there is a need to industrialise the state.
"Socialism is not achievable at this point of time. We have been working within the capitalist system and as such private capital has to be used while social welfare programmes by the state government would continue," Basu told reporters in response to a question after attending a meeting of the party's state secretariat.
"Socialism is a far cry. Socialism is our political agenda and it was mentioned in our party document but capitalism will continue to be the compulsion for the future," the CPI-M politburo member said.
On January 3, Bhattacherjee had strongly advocated capitalism and not socialism as the only way to industrialise the state.
The allies of the CPI-M in the Left Front like Forward Bloc and RSP have accused the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government of deviating from the Left ideology after more than 30 years of power in the state.
They accused him of toeing the capitalist path to industrialise the state and alleged that CPI-M was pursuing a policy of double standard by following the capitalist course here while criticising the Centre's economic policies.