Communism 101 for Idiots, and a few Idiot Questions

This nice communist feller sat a spell with us on the porch last evening. We did our best to follow his wisdom, but still had a few lingering questions...

The Wisdom(Sarcasm font here):

Workers create all the wealth in capitalist society. That's people like me and you who have to work for a living to make a profit for someone else.
For all the talk about "wealth creation", capitalists do not actually create anything. Take a factory with raw materials coming in one end and consumer products coming out the other. Something magical ... See Morehappens to those raw materials: human work. Workers add value to the raw materials, and receive less in wages than the value they add. The surplus value is taken by the capitalist as profit, despite the fact he has not done anything to the products he is selling to increase their exchange value.

The constant need to seek out greater and greater profits and open up new markets creates wars. The capitalist class within a country lobbies its government and the government uses state power - the state has a monopoly of violence under capitalism - to open up these markets by force if necessary.

The ideas of the capitalist class are the ideas of the capitalist state. In the same way, the ideas of aristocrats and monarchies were the dominant ideas of the feudal state and the ideas of the slaveowning Roman elite were the dominant ideas of Roman society: in any given historical epoch, the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas. One thing the Romans knew well was "divide and rule" and it is a maxim that has served ruling classes well in the millennia since. Look at our mass media, owned and controlled by wealthy capitalists such as Rupert Murdoch - every day our mass media sows fear and division. Strikers are "holding the country to ransom" (what about bankers?), workers are encouraged to look down on lower paid immigrant workers because of their immigration status, to encourage homophobia, to divide along racial lines, or along religious lines ("tuppence ha'penny looking down on tuppence" was how the attitude of Protestant workers to Catholic workers in the north of Ireland was described, for example).

Only by fighting back together can we hope to overcome these divisions which after 300 years of the capitalist system are pretty deep-seeded now, but through the experience of struggling side by side with one another these divisions do disappear. We socialists are for extreme democracy - maximum democracy, with rank and file committees in the workplace, in the armed forces, in our communities, our schools, right up to a national level. We are for the right of recall of any delegate of they are not doing what they were elected to do. We are for democratic planning of production to meet human need, not private greed. From each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her need.

IDIOTS" Response...(Sarcasm font here)

Thanks for your patient effort and putting big thoughts into little words most of us can understand. Not that we've achieved your total clarity, but we're trying! A few questions with which perhaps you can help:

Why don't the workers in non-capitalist societies create the same wealth as do their comrades in capitalist societies?

Is the presence of factories in capitalist countries and the absence of same in non-capitalist countries a voodoo thing? Beyond our ability to comprehend and certainly no concern of us the common folk? Are there 'factory fairies' that favor the capitalist dark-side?

Why don't workers add value to raw materials in non-capitalist societies?

Why are we common folks under the incorrect impression that Rupert Murdoch is so unlike the rest of media owners?
Are the rest really like him? I'll be dang....

Some of us have trouble absorbing the obvious truth that certain political methods employ the 'divide and rule' technique, while the correct one, yours, sees clearly and benevolently that separating "workers" and "non-workers" as we understand you would define them is not the same technique designed for the same end...

And, finally, just wundrin' who will interpret the 'ability' of each person so their efforts can be 'guided and judged,' as well as who will determine the ultimate need of "each" of us---and what if the person who produces, or the "needer", disagrees? How will you, er...we, enforce this evaluation?

In the past, trying to make these wonderful things happen with real people seems to have resulted in massive extermination of millions. Is this a necessary part of the process? Seems a bit harsh. Is there a newly developed method of getting folks to accept the 'collective wisdom' (of folks like yourself) in lieu of acting on their own 'selfish' judgment?

Drop by again soon, I'm sure the rest of the front porchers have some questions too...