Facebook is on the hot seat as the main-wing U.S. bosses have launched a multi-front attack to force billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg to contribute more to their war plans. They’re also sending a message to the other technology mega-companies: They must serve the political needs of finance capitalism or suffer the consequences.
Two leading ruling-class mouthpieces, the New York Times and the Observer of London, have led the charge in exposing Cambridge Analytica, an election consulting committee that paid for Facebook user data on 87 million people. The information was used to help elect Donald Trump and earlier to win the Brexit referendum to split Britain from the European Union.
The attack comes now because president Trump has grown increasingly erratic and unreliable. As the U.S. rulers’ main wing, led by investment banks like JPMorgan Chase and multinational oil companies like ExxonMobil, struggles to hold on as the world’s leading imperialist power, it needs to try to push Trump back in line. It needs to stop the tech industry from helping rival capitalists who are backing the loose-cannon president. And as it builds toward war and fascism, it needs to bring U.S. media—including social media—under tighter control.
Facebook’s crime: aiding the opposition
One of Cambridge Analytica’s leading investors is Trump supporter Robert Mercer, whose daughter Rebecca sits on their board. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, the white supremacist and “America First” isolationist who put Breitbart News on the map, was a fellow board member. In the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, Cambridge Analytica funneled data and “psychographic modeling” to a political action committee founded by John Bolton, Trump’s new national security advisor and a longtime opponent of the U.S. bosses’ attempts to build the international alliances they’ll need for World War III (Washington Post, 3/23).
Mercer, one of the wealthiest capitalists in the rulers’ domestically oriented wing, has funded campaigns for tax cuts, ending Obamacare, denying climate change, and shutting down immigration. The Mercers have targeted U.S. Senate leader Mitch McConnell and other mainstream Republican politicians, who are important players in protecting the bosses’ imperialist interests in the Middle East and elsewhere..
The main wing of the ruling class is making a special example out of Zuckerberg, whose crime was to help Mercer keep arch-imperialist and loyal main-wing servant Hillary Clinton out of the Oval Office. One way or the other, Zuckerberg will be compelled to give up some of his billions—just as Bill Gates was disciplined by the federal antitrust suit against Microsoft. In 2000, two years after the suit was brought by Bill Clinton’s Department of Justice, Gates founded the Gates Foundation. Over the last 10 years alone, it has donated $34 billion to education reform and non-governmental organizations operating in foreign countries on issues supported by the main-wing U.S. bosses.
In the face of weakening U.S. dominance and a fast-rising China, the world order established after World War II is falling apart. The U.S. ruling class is locked in a desperate struggle against renegade members of its own class as well as its big international rivals. The U.S. bosses’ weakening situation will continue to drive them toward fascism. They must discipline the Mercers and Kochs—along with Facebook, Google, and Apple—as they intensify their exploitation and terrorization of the working class. They’ll need far more national unity to have a chance to prevail in the next global war.
Facebook attacked
In 2011, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) imposed a consent decree on Facebook regarding protection of personal data. This represented the first overt attempt by the big capitalists to bring Zuckerberg to heel. Subsequently, Facebook sought to prove its loyalty in the 2012 presidential election. Carol Davidsen Media Director of Obama for America said, “Facebook…didn’t stop us…[Facebook] [was] candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side” (Daily Mail 3/18).
In fact, Facebook has always collected user data and for years has shared that data with paid advertisers and app developers. Sharing data is the reason Facebook exists. It’s how it became a $500 billion company, and it’s certainly nothing new. But the company’s Mercer-Trump connection has led former FTC officials to suggest that Facebook has violated its consent decree, which could lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in fines (fortune.com, 3/30).
U.S. envious of rival bosses’ fascism
The main trend in the world today is growing fascism. In general, other top imperialist and regional powers have more controlled and unified ruling classes than the U.S. Their media outlets function as a reliable arm of the state. Opposition voices are neutralized, shut down, and often killed. The U.S. main wing must be envious—and taking notes.
In Russia, shortly after assuming the presidency in 2000, Vladimir Putin began consolidating his control: “Oligarch owners were either co-opted, jailed or exiled, and by 2006 most major Russian media were either directly or indirectly under Putin’s administration’s control…. The editors-in-chief of all the major media in Russia attend regular ‘strategy meetings’ with Putin’s staffers” (The Guardian, 3/24/17).
In China, state control over the news media “is achieved through a complex combination of party monitoring of news content, legal restrictions on journalists, and financial incentives for self-censorship” (2006 FreedomHouse Report). China also cracks down on video-streaming websites and requires users to register their real names on online forums. “New rules also require online news websites to be overseen by government-approved editorial staff and for workers to have reporting credentials from the central government” (CNBC, 10/26/17).
In Saudi Arabia, during the recent purge by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, two media tycoons were among those arrested: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, majority owner of the Rotana media company, and Waleed Al Ibrahim, the owner of MBC and Al Arabiya, a pan-Arab news channel based in Dubai. Controlling “a wide network of Middle Eastern television channels, radio stations, music labels and digital entertainment assets from Morocco to Oman, [they] were reportedly arrested for resisting the crown prince’s repeated attempts over the past year to buy their companies” (Al Jazeera, 11/19/17).
Similar situations can be found in Iran and Turkey, among other countries.
U.S. plays catch up
Beyond extracting money from capitalists reluctant to pay their share, the U.S. rulers are desperate to gain a tighter leash over their media. When the U.S. bosses rose to world preeminence as the dominant capitalist power after World War II, mass media was narrowly held and easily controlled. There were three national news networks and four or five newspapers with national influence.
Today, with the rise of cable, satellites, and the internet, thousands of stations have national reach. Small operators like Breitbart and InfoWars can reach tens of millions of people. The attack on Facebook can be seen as the big U.S. bosses’ attempt to bring undisciplined, rogue media, including social media, under greater control by the state.  
The bosses have no problem collecting our data
While Facebook has been selling whatever “private” information they can, we should not be fooled by the ruling class’s feigned concern over the collection of personal data. In fact, the bosses have long relied on private companies to collect and hold onto personal data. The USA Freedom Act, hypocritically touted as a limit on the power of the National Security Agency (NSA), was signed by Obama in 2015. It requires every phone carrier to collect and hold indefinitely the records of all their customers.
“As a result, the NSA no longer has to worry about keeping up its own database and…the percentage of available records has shot up from 30 percent to virtually 100. Rather than one internal, incomplete database, the NSA can now query any of several complete ones” (ABC News 10/20/16).
No good side in bosses’ dogfights
Between the main wing fascists, the Tea Party klansmen, and the Chinese, Saudi, and Russian butchers, workers have no good choices under capitalism. As these bosses fight out their differences, the international working class will bear the brunt of the attacks.
Capitalism is built on racism, sexism, and the massive exploitation of workers around the globe. The rulers’ wars are killing millions and will kill and devastate millions more. In a period of rising fascism, the data the bosses are collecting will inevitably be used as a surveillance tool to try to stop us from fighting back. A communist revolution won’t be built through the bosses’ social media. It can only be constructed by building a base in the international working class. Join us!

Washington DC, April 4—Calling for the firing of the Howard University president, along with an end to racist tuition hikes and a sexist campus culture, HU Resist and hundreds of Howard University students are occupying the main administration building.
On March 25, the protesters made nine demands to both address immediate needs on campus and express support for workers in the surrounding LeDroit-Shaw neighborhood. (See box).  Four days later, the students seized the administration building. As we go to press, the occupation has entered its seventh day, with 450 students holding the building—and renaming it the Kwame Ture Student Center (after Stokely Carmichael). Students have secured all entrances to block the return of campus police. The community has responded by bringing food, water, bedding, and solidarity to the occupiers.
Through bold struggle and deepening connections with workers, HU Resist students are learning that the capitalist system itself must be dismantled and replaced with a communist society that can meet the needs of the international working class. Many, including those who led the occupation and organized an earlier town hall, are reading CHALLENGE and other communist literature to better understand the strategic need for a revolutionary party that galvanizes all aspects of the class struggle. As one student noted, the Howard occupation—marked by student solidarity, mutual respect and assistance, and love for fellow students and workers—was a taste of communism.
Seizing an opportunity
HU Resist has worked diligently throughout this semester to survey student needs and opinions, the basis for the nine demands. Shortly after the demands were released on March 25, a major scandal erupted on campus—the embezzlement by six administrative staff of more than $1 million in financial aid money, a crime the administration had covered up for years. At a March 29 HU Resist rally, anger over this theft from poor students reached a boiling point. Seizing the opportunity, HU Resist led hundreds of students into the administration building.
President Wayne A.I. Frederick has declined to meet with the students, huddling instead with a few of his handpicked student supporters. Members of the Board of Trustees, however, have met several times with the HU Resist organizers to negotiate the demands. As of press time, the Board had agreed only to one demand, a commitment to provide campus housing for students under 21.
At the same time, 70 faculty members have signed an open letter of solidarity with the students, with more faculty signing daily. The letter has been retweeted over 500 times, signifying the importance of faculty support for the bold student action. After an appeal from an HU Resist representative, the leadership of the Faculty Senate has set a no-confidence vote for President Frederick, the provost, the chief operating officer, and the Board’s executive committee, to be held by Friday, April 6.
HU Resist fights gentrification and wage theft
At a town hall meeting two weeks earlier, HU Resist teamed with a worker rights nonprofit organization, Jobs with Justice, to expose Howard’s unconscionable collaboration in unsafe, unfair labor practices, and in the displacement of Black residents. As the so-called “Mecca” of historically Black universities, Howard says it is committed to “the development of distinguished, historically aware, and compassionate graduates, and to the discovery of solutions to human problems.” But actions speak louder than mission statements. In an effort to maximize investment returns, Howard has joined with Gateway Investment Partners to construct a 319-unit luxury apartment building in the working-class neighborhood adjacent to campus. The development will feature a swimming pool, a courtyard with fireplaces and grilling stations, a test kitchen for cooking demonstrations, a fitness center and yoga studio, and a rooftop observation deck with views of the U.S. Capitol.
What it won’t include is affordable housing. The project is designed to accelerate gentrification in D.C.’s historic Shaw and Pleasant Plains neighborhoods, to jack up rents and property taxes, and to drive workers and their families from their homes—and even out of the city.
Construction workers, community members, & students fight back
To rub salt into the wound, Gateway brought in Power Design, Inc. as its electrical subcontractor. Power Design uses labor brokers—typically shell companies—to hire and misclassify workers as independent contractors, a scheme designed to evade labor laws and ‘fair’ payment. Its business model actually budgets for wage theft, allowing it to win contracts as the lowest bidder by robbing workers. Power Design has faced more than 20 federal lawsuits and class actions, including multiple suits for wage theft in several area construction projects. Nonetheless, and despite an ongoing investigation by the D.C. attorney general, it was approved by the D.C. administration as an apprenticeship program sponsor.
Latin construction workers from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and white workers from the carpenters’ union were among those attending the town hall. Quickly overcoming their initial hesitancy to address the crowd, many stepped up to attest to the unfair, unsafe labor practices they have encountered on the project site. Community members expressed outrage at Howard’s complicity in worker exploitation. A 60-year-old Black woman from the neighborhood challenged the City Council member who oversees the Department of Employee Services to “fix this NOW!”  An older Black man from the neighborhood pointed out that similar struggles are occurring across the city, including Barry Farm and Brookland Manor, where developers are displacing working-class families from some of D.C.’s last truly affordable housing units.
Several Howard students bore witness to their poorly maintained student dormitories, some of which lack hot water and oblige students to reach out to peers living elsewhere for a hot shower.
Moreover, there is a shortage of dorm space to meet demand. With Howard selling dorm buildings to luxury developers, some students are forced to live miles from campus. HU Resist presented a draft resolution on housing to be addressed to the Howard administration, soliciting suggestions for demands from attendees. On the matter of “affordable” housing, local residents and workers highlighted the discrepancy between the average annual income for the area’s white workers, which exceeds $100,000, compared with the $30,000 average for Black and Latin workers. Using the high median incomes of primarily white workers in the affordability formula skews the calculation against Black and Latin residents, essentially shutting them out of access to housing in D.C.
In collaboration with local residents and construction workers, more than 40 Howard students played key roles in speaking at the town hall and organizing the continuing fightback. With such militant, class-conscious youth in the lead, the future is bright.

DEMANDS OF HOWARD UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

In addition to the ouster of the HU president, the students have made these demands:

• Give the student body power over University policies and appointments of board members, administrators, and faculty.
• Immediately disarm campus police, who have drawn guns on several students, and create a Police Oversight Committee controlled by students, faculty, staff, and off-campus community representatives.
• Freeze tuition and open the books on bloated administration salaries and perks. (Since 2008, the cost of tuition at Howard has nearly doubled, while the median income of Black households has declined.)
• Guarantee adequate campus housing for all students under the age of 21. (The Board of Trustees has now agreed to this demand.)
• Commit to an “active fight” against rape culture on campus. (Six students have sued the University over its failure to uphold its Title IX obligations in their sexual assault cases.)
• Establish a grievance system to hold faculty and administrators accountable for their words and actions toward marginalized students.
• Expand counseling and mental health services, which are now woefully understaffed.

To demonstrate their interest in the wellbeing of area workers, students are also demanding that the University allocate resources for a community food pantry and to work with community residents to reduce displacement from gentrification.

 Texas, March 24—Bringing communist ideas to the masses, the Progressive Labor Party and friends joined thousands in Texas in the March for Our Lives protests.
We participated in both the annual Cesar Chavez March and the March for Our Lives, held on the same day. We distributed hundreds of leaflets that exposed the central role the bosses’ violence against the working class under capitalism.
Our leaflet connected the terror of mass shootings at schools to the “legal” state violence perpetuated by the U.S. border patrol, police, and military. We called on workers to smash capitalism by taking the fight to the rulers’ doorstep, into their office buildings and onto our jobs. As workers, we have the power to shut down the murderous profit system. Our leaflet was well received at both marches.
The day before the march in Houston, we made signs and brainstormed chants at a school event where we discussed how gun violence is a symptom of a violent capitalist system. The following day, a group of 10 high school students, teachers, and parents joined the 15,000-strong protest in an effort to push the rally’s politics to the left. As the march got under way, we led chants of “No Trump, No NRA, No Fascist USA!” that rang thorough downtown.
We marched from a downtown park to the downtown office of Senator Ted Cruz, who was targeted by the march’s liberal organizers because of his support for the National Rifle Association (NRA). The organizers’ main goal was to register more voters and expand support for Democratic candidates in this fall’s congressional elections. But while it’s easy to expose racist Republicans like Donald Trump and Cruz, we must also expose racist Democrats like U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, who pushed for the fascist “Secure Communities” deportation program that has intensified attacks on immigrants.
Ted Cruz has got to go
As we neared Cruz’s office, the crowd chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Ted Cruz has got to go!” The main message from the march leaders to the mostly white crowd was that we should focus on voting Cruz out of office. A PL’er turned to a Spanish teacher and to the students in our group, who were Black and Latin, and said we should do a chant in Spanish. Everyone agreed.
A PL’er yelled out that not only do politicians like Ted Cruz enable mass shootings in our schools, but they are also anti-immigrant racists. We urged the crowd around us to join in a chant in our chant: “Ted Cruz Escucha, Estamos en La Lucha!” (“Listen Ted Cruz, We Are in the Struggle!”) The mainly white crowd joined in, and we kept the chant going as long as we could. Instead of calling on everyone to vote, we were telling the bosses that the multiracial working class is ready to fight back against racism.
Afterward, one high school student and rally organizer approached our group and said she liked our Spanish chant. We talked for a while and exchanged information. We’ll be touching base with her to organize around the next round of national school walkouts on April 20.
For our students, this was their first protest ever. Despite some initial hesitation, a number of them stepped up and were unafraid to lead chants and push the march to the left. A few students made contacts and are planning future actions. They are emerging as leaders. The march was a valuable reminder that when you make anti-racism the center of what you do, the working class will follow your lead.
As April 20 and May Day approach, we will continue to put forward the Party’s ideas and train students to be fighters for the working class.

*****

CHICAGO, March 24— A multiracial, multi-generational contingent of Progressive Labor Party comrades joined the thunderous March for Our Lives action in Union Park. It was apparent how much vicious gun violence resonated with students and parents. PLP broadcasting our revolutionary communist line that gun violence stems from an inherently violent and racist capitalist system.
The PLP contingent distributed at least 500 CHALLENGEs and over 1,000 flyers at the entrance of the park. The flyer connected these mass shootings to the violent decadence of capitalism. Many marchers, especially youth, were receptive to our communist politics and picked up on the chants that we started, including, ““Turn the gun around, shoot the bosses down.”
Liberals Exploit
Working-class anger
To contrast the liberal, pro-democratic Party chant of “Vote Them Out!”—referring to pro-NRA, Republican politicians in Congress—PL’ers chanted “Bigger than NRA, Bigger than Guns!” It’s essential to call out the racist opportunistic liberal bosses, such as the ones who organized this mostly-white, less-working-class march. These hypocrites cynically exploit working-class anger and grief as part of their plan to channel workers into their dead-end voting game and prop up their deadly profit system.
The Democrats have proven themselves to be just as deadly and indifferent to workers’ suffering as their Republican counterparts, if not more. Whether turning a blind eye to the racist gun violence devastating Black and Latin neighborhoods here in Chicago, dropping bombs on our working-class sisters and brothers in the Middle East, or deporting scores of families to near-certain death in Central America, they constantly show where their intentions and interests lie.
Capitalism dependent on violence
All politicians at the end of the day serve the capitalist system, which needs state violence such as racist police killings, deportations, and imperialist war in order to survive. Only a communist society, led by a mass international PLP, can break the alienation, desperation, and relentless drive for profit in capitalism that destroys millions of workers’ lives every year.
Communism is the best possible method to eliminate the widespread violence we witness today. We will revolutionize society away from inequality and competition. That will require organized and revolutionary class violence against the bosses and their state. Workers worldwide will be armed with communist politics. Through prolonged struggle, we will build a world based on equality, cooperation, and workers’ power.
Although the racist and sexist liberal bosses are the ones steering these mass demonstrations today, their influence can and must be exposed for the deadly lie that it is.
It’s our responsibility as communists to immerse ourselves in struggle with these masses of youth and parents, in order to build working-class solidarity and class consciousness. In doing so, we can widen the target beyond just Trump and the NRA, to that of the whole rotten violent system of capitalism.

NEW YORK CITY, March 17—Students led the Education for Liberation conference in a local college to discuss how to fight for workers’ power while getting educated in the bosses’ school system.  True to Progressive Labor Party’s commitment to youth-driven leadership, both teacher and student comrades led two workshops on the critical topics of racial integration inside schools and the concealed issue of the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP). With an emphasis on militant fight back against racial inequality as the best “therapy.” the conference succeeded in not only strengthening the political understanding of young comrades while also widening the number of workers who are now supportive of PLP’s fight for a better world (see below).
After PLP members opened the conference by placing our fight for communism in the larger context of revolutionary history around the world, a group of high school students presented their understanding of how capitalist culture shapes emotional and psychological stress within schools using tactics like standardized testing. Other students also shared the racist ways in which capitalist school culture is organized to alienate Black students in particular.
Even though we had a definite set of values that we were putting forward, all participants were encouraged to voice their opinions. A professor stated how hard he had worked to receive his degrees, and that we should celebrate the opportunity that people have to work hard. In response, a PLP member exposed how the bosses’ education system utilizes the illusion of meritocracy to instill capitalist values in students. Everyone appreciated the productive exchange, and the professor who advocated for meritocracy was able to perceive a more critical perspective on the topic.
In one of the groups led by teachers, students were asked what role STPP plays in society. STPP is retooling classroom management and discipline to be more punitive to serve as an avenue for masses of working class children, especially Black and Latin, to eventually be criminalized and cut off from many career opportunities as adults. This invisible mechanism in turn has afforded bosses the opportunity to justify their racist portrayal of Black and Latin workers and divide the working class.
The other group, led by teachers and students, taught us that bosses make segregation seem like natural and the moves they take to entrench it seem invisible. As the panelists explained the nature of segregation at their school, participants recognized the aspects of that contradiction and discussed the steps they took to organize multiracial fightback.
Worldwide, working class youth are being exposed to capitalist exploitation everyday. This conference demonstrated that given the opportunity to teach us about the oppression they see, youth from Brooklyn to Haiti around PLP will energetically provide leadership and learn with us to fight back. More teachers and students on the forefront of class struggle in their schools and colleges will be able to add to the panels and discussions that PLP sponsors.
For now, we turned racist, anti-communist attacks in the NYC school system into the basis for a larger, wider campaign to unite more workers than ever around an agenda that will give our young people a real education. Join us in the streets on May Day!

*****

Letters from Students

Participating in the walkout was eye opening. Never before have I witnessed so many young people united under a common goal and demanding that the government change. The conference further affirmed the need for more youth fightback.
The school integration fight shows the power of multiracial unity and worker mobilization. Resistance against capitalism has never been tolerated in the U.S. Still, we are ready to combat these regimes.
*
I felt like an active participant in a larger revolutionary movement currently making strides to abolish the capitalist order of U.S. society and establish equality on all fronts.
The conference allowed me to gather with like-minded individuals and discuss how communism would eradicate problems in schools. By looking at similar communist movements from the past, I learned new methods of mobilizing and building on current movements. What’s next for us is more student-led movements dedicated to overthrowing capitalism.
*
I felt a mixture of cynicism and hope. At the walkout, I was met with a sense of apathy and confusion among the crowd; many used this as a chance to skip school. Yet, it was empowering to march down to Borough Hall, all chanting, all washed in energy. The conference showed us a closer, firmer community willing to support us.
*
The walkout and the conference have one thing in common: ambition. Hope itself doesn’t do what we did because hope is noncommittal—a sort of expectation that change will happen on its own. It won’t. The diverse community at the conference continued what students did at the walkout. It proves our inherent determination to fight for change, even in the face of passivity.
*
The walkout was a much-needed step for change in our capitalist society. As the next generation, we must fight for people’s rights as they are undermined by money and power. At the conference, we learned in depth about the School to Prison Pipeline, gun violence, and student fightbacks at other schools.
I hope individuals realize that gun violence and incarceration amongst Black and Latin youth is directly linked to the domineering rich white men. It was empowering to see so many gathered for the same cause. The fight for justice is never over.
*
Playing a local role in a national walkout was a cathartic experience. I felt I was a part of something bigger than myself, something historical. Yet, I felt that young Black and Latin students and the working class have been engaging in protests for decades, and those protests have been sanctioned, shut down, and criminalized. I realized politicians mustn’t use our future fightback as photo-ops.
*
Participating in the walkout was a transformative experience. I realized the potential of a communist insurgence. I was reminded that when we harness the power of education, capitalism can be torn apart; and that students, oppressed by the mechanisms of finance capital, still have an innate calling for a freedom only to be realized on the communist horizon.
For the first time in my life, I saw kids discarding the foul education that capitalism imposed on us in lieu of organic communist mobilizing. The epigram of the day: the specter of communism haunts the U.S.

**