Sami Kupiszewski
As the new year of 2026 unfolds, the international system is entering a period of instability and reconfiguration. The long era of unchallenged US dominance is weakening. While the US remains a major imperial power, its capacity to impose outcomes unilaterally is increasingly constrained by internal political fragmentation, economic overstretch and declining authority over traditional allies. This erosion has opened space for new centres of power, most notably within the expanding BRICS bloc, whose growing coordination reflects the emergence of a multipolar world order.
This shift does not represent an automatic advance toward socialism. Multipolarity is not anti-imperialism in itself. However, it does weaken the structures through which Western capital and military power have been enforced globally. These developments sharpen contradictions within the global system and create both dangers and opportunities for working-class movements, particularly in smaller countries such as Ireland.
Ireland’s position in this changing environment exposes the hollowness of official claims to neutrality. The Irish economy is deeply embedded in US led circuits of capital, particularly through multinational dominance in technology, pharmaceuticals, finance, and data infrastructure. This dependency binds Ireland to imperial priorities and exposes Irish workers to geopolitical risks over which they have no democratic control. Neutrality cannot be understood as a legal fiction or rhetorical posture; it requires material independence, public ownership of strategic sectors, and resistance to military, intelligence and economic integration with NATO and US power.
These realities place a heightened responsibility on the Communist Party of Ireland. Periods of global instability demand political clarity and organisational seriousness. Yet one of the most pressing dangers facing communist parties today is not repression alone, but liberal conformism — the quiet accommodation to bourgeois norms that hollow out revolutionary politics from within.
This conformism appears in many forms. Faith in proceduralism over power, substitution of identity discourse for class struggle and the treatment of socialism as an ethical aspiration rather than a material project rooted in state power. Too often, communist organisations adapt their language and priorities to remain respectable within liberal civil society, mistaking visibility for influence and discourse for organisation. In doing so, they disarm the working class politically.
A central weakness that must be confronted is the uncritical absorption of bourgeois critical theory and the wider “imperial theory industry.” These frameworks produce a compatible left — one that is hyper-individualised, culturally fragmented and severed from the collective needs of working-class people.
By reducing politics to discourse, representation, or moral positioning, they obscure the fundamental realities of exploitation, ownership, and class power. Communists must reject these approaches and reassert Marxism-Leninism as a science of social transformation, not a cultural identity.
Closely related is the failure to distinguish clearly between primary and secondary contradictions. In Ireland today, the primary contradiction remains between labour and capital, mediated through imperialist dependency and foreign ownership of key sectors of the economy. Secondary contradictions around culture, identity, or institutional reform are real, but they cannot be allowed to displace or obscure the central struggle. When communist politics collapses these distinctions, it risks chasing symptoms while leaving structures intact.
The CPI must therefore deepen its analysis of the Irish state itself. Its role as a facilitator of imperial capital, its subordination to EU economic discipline, and its participation (direct or indirect) in Western military and intelligence structures. Neutrality cannot be defended without confronting these realities head-on. Nor can socialism be built without challenging the dominance of foreign capital and asserting democratic control over production, energy, food systems and infrastructure.
Concrete alternatives are essential. Calls for public ownership must be tied to democratic planning and working-class power, not abstract nationalisation. Anti-imperialism must be grounded in workplace organising, tenant struggles, and community mobilisation, rather than confined to statements or symbolic positioning. Political education is not optional: without a theoretically grounded cadre, opportunism and populism will fill the vacuum.
As global power realigns, the pressures to dilute politics will intensify. Liberal populism offers the illusion of change without confrontation, while imperial-aligned “progressivism” redirects anger into safe, non-threatening channels. The task of the Communist Party is to resist these tendencies, not accommodate them.
The coming period will be marked by instability, competition, and sharpening class antagonisms. Ireland’s position within this environment demands vigilance, independence, and organisation. As 2026 approaches, the task of the Communist Party of Ireland is clear: to reject liberal conformism, restore revolutionary clarity, and prepare the working class for the struggles ahead. Only through disciplined organisation, ideological firmness, and a clear understanding of the contradictions shaping Irish society can genuine sovereignty, democracy, and socialism be achieved.