Mr. Paine. I don't remember him making any bones about it the very first meeting. He told me he had become a Marxist, in his own apartment there, that he had become a Marxist by reading books and never having met a Communist in this country.
And he also then told me with a certain sadness or regret that he couldn't speak about political and economic subjects with his people, and fellows at work.
(At this point Senator Cooper entered the hearing room.)
Mr. Liebeler. You were going to mention specific areas of political discussion that you had with him.
Mr. Paine. One other thing happened in this first half hour, the most fruitful half hour I had ever had with him. He had mentioned his employer. I probably asked him why did he leave this country to go to the Soviet Union, and his supreme theme in this regard is the exploitation of man by man, by which he means one man making a profit out of another man's labor, which is the normal employment situation in this country and to which he found—took, felt great resentment.
He was aware that his employer made—he made more money for his employer than he was paid and specifically he mentioned how his employer of the engraving company goods and chattels that he had, that Oswald didn't have, and with some specific resentment toward this employer, and I thought privately to myself that this resentment must show through if he ever meets his employer, it must sort of show through and that his employer wouldn't find that man very attractive. So this was his guiding theme.
The reason it appears that this country, the system in this country had to go, had to be changed, was because of this supreme immoral way of managing affairs here, the exploitation of man by man which occurs in this country.
We discussed about it occurring in the Soviet Union, the taxation of a man's labor, it occurs there also, and it appeared that only, he seemed to agree or sometimes I had to feed him, this conversation now is a later one, when we were talking about the specifics of exploitation of man by man, he agreed that the only difference was that in the Soviet Union it is a choice which is impersonal.
The person who decides the man's wages and labor does not stand to gain by it whereas in this country the man who decides stands to gain by it.
Mr. Dulles. The man who decides what, to employ the other man?