Within the last month a massive wave of strikes has engulfed the entire country. The working class is waging an economic battle for survival. In the heat of the class battles these strikes are assuming an increasingly political character. Demands of the striking workers include freedom for all political prisoners and an end to military rule. The proletariat is beginning to champion the democratic aspirations of all the oppressed, and to move toward the solution of the crisis imposed on Iranian society by the shah’s capitalist rule.

The bourgeoisie is scared and is engineering a massive flight of its capital—now reportedly to the tune of more than $50 million a day!—in anticipation of its worst fears. The majority of the royal court have left the country and are in hiding in such places a Switzerland.

The degree of isolation of the monarchy is such that bourgeois politicians no longer dare to be identified with it. It finds no alternative but to resort, more and more, to military rule and imperialist support. This is bringing its downfall closer.

….Under the influence of the mass movement the army is becoming unreliable; there is open fraternization with the people…. The longer the shah hangs on to his cracking throne, the deeper becomes the participation of the working class in the revolutionary upsurge, and the graver becomes the crisis of the ruling class.  
 
November 30, 1953
The American people are still suffering from shock—the shock of seeing an ex-President of the United States pilloried as “disloyal” by the head of the Justice Department. The feeling of being hit in the stomach is heightened by the fact that the victim happened to be America’s chief instigator of the witch hunt until he left office, the author of the “loyalty” oath, the “loyalty” purge, and the “subversive” list. If Truman himself can be smeared, who in this land can consider himself safe?

The witch-hunting charge made by Attorney General Brownell that Truman knowingly appointed to office an alleged spy, Harry Dexter White, had sensational repercussions—a nationwide TV and radio reply by Truman, a counter-blast by Brownell, and a fascist-like harangue by McCarthy over the major hook-ups.

But most sensational of all was a new development in American politics. The ominous growth in power of the witch hunters and the FBI suddenly became evident to millions in America.

This realization came from the unexpected sight of Truman himself caught in the web of the witch hunt. It was rammed home by the spectacle of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, disclosing what vast powers have fallen into his hands.

The head of the secret political police appeared briefly, almost casually, before a Congressional committee. The nation’s most authoritative legislators listened to his words Nov. 17 “as if they were gospel,” according to James Reston, Washington correspondent of the N.Y. Times.  
 
 
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