This was a question or rather a series of questions I heard over the weekend as I was discussing Marxism, class, labour etc. with a friend and I frankly couldn’t really answer their questions. So here I am again asking it because this community provides incredible answers <3
The discussion was about work and their question was: “If class is abolished in communism and the people are taken care of, why would anyone work at all? Who is going to work in coffee shops, pick up trash, work in stores etc.? What would be the incentive for people to do anything productive?” I did my best saying that those jobs would still exist, but I kind of fumbled the argument.
As a P.S. - some people might find this answer unsatisfactory because their whole lives are built around capitalism and the exchange of money for labour. Imagining communism also requires us to imagine a completely new and different logic of human relations. Sort of like proposing to a medieval serf to imagine a world without kings. It might be tricky to wrap your head around at first.
This is probably the single most difficult thing for people to imagine, a different system to the one they are currently living in.
This is why the goal of communists is also actively building an alternative to physically show what’s possible. Not only theorize on paper. To tie it back to your question, my communist party organizes a festival every year that’s fully run by volunteers. People cook, clean up, build big tents. It doesn’t pay, but it rewarding nonetheless to participate in a community and work towards something concrete. In a way this is a little communist production model.