(Testimony of Michael R. Paine)
Mr. Paine.
is just logic or reason just didn't seem to work or hold water in this case, and we were left then with the starkness of his statement that this was an unforgivable moral sin, and he called it a moral sin or I questioned him to that effect, and so he thought it was a moral sin and he thought he was moral by adhering to that doctrine.
Representative Ford.
Did he appear to enjoy these give and takes between you and himself or did he resent them as you proceeded in your discussions?
Mr. Paine.
I don't think he resented them. I noticed at times he got quite hot under the collar and I noticed that he was holding his, staying on a steady keel even better than I was, as though he had had considerable practice in sticking to, controlling himself, holding his position and not getting ruffled.
Representative Ford.
But in this process over a period of time during these four discussions he never deviated from his basic thesis?
Mr. Paine.
Yes. Of course, as I said to the others, I don't believe whether you were here, we only had about four talks altogether, and I later came to realize that if he were to have abandoned any one of these or have abandoned that one in particular, that would have undermined his whole philosophy, would humanly itself quite unreasonable to expect a fundamental exchange within an evening, just because of a logical compulsion or logical argument or something.
Mr. Dulles.
Did you get the impression that he felt both systems, the American system and the Soviet system involved the exploitation of man by man except it was a different exploiter?
Mr. Paine.
I gathered--I was irked because it seemed to me the difference that he accepted as a sufficient difference, the one in the Soviet Union was impersonal, that he was not, in other words--he admitted in the Soviet Union that the tax rate which was a general term then for the amount of money or reward that is not returned of what a man makes, was higher in the Soviet Union. He agreed that that could be true, and didn't seem to be dismayed at that. So I did not find criticism of the Soviet Union on that score.
And in fact he didn't--I didn't discover in what ways he would like to try to change the Soviet Union except he didn't like the restrictions on his freedom there. Neither did he see there was any connection between the restrictions on freedom there and the freedom we have here without control of how the relationship between men would be governed.
Mr. Dulles.
Did he ever go into the question of the relative position of labor in the United States from the point of view of its freedom of bargaining and the control of labor in the Soviet Union? Did that ever come up?
Mr. Paine.
No. I think, I can't remember whether it was a conversation I had directly with him or immediately after, I was following this idea that here we feel we have quite a different attitude about exploitation. Somebody--he felt exploited and he thought all the working class was exploited, and he also thought they were brainwashed, and he also thought that churches were all alike, all the religious sects were the same and they were all apparatus of the power structure to maintain itself in power.
When I pointed out that our church was financed by people like myself, when I contribute so many dollars to the church, he just shrugged his shoulders. It didn't--his views still stood and it also permitted him, I think, gave him the moral ground to dismiss my arguments because I was here just a product of my environment and I didn't know better and he had the word from the enlightenment, that he knew the truth and therefore I was just spouting the line that was fed to me by the power structure.
Mr. Liebeler.
I think you mentioned before that he had wanted to put you in a category, categorize you. Did he indicate to you during that first conversation that he had concluded what category?
Mr. Paine.
No; it was over several conversations, I suppose it was the last conversation we had, he couldn't put me in a category and he named about seven or eight categories.
Mr. Liebeler.
What were they?
Mr. Paine.
I wasn't a Bircher, I wasn't a liberal, a Communist, a Socialist, probably something to do with religion, something like that, atheist.
Mr. Dulles.
He didn't say whether you were a Republican or Democrat?
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