An argument presented to me on several occasions is that communism encourages laziness, as you are provided with your necessities regardless if you do labor or not. That you could sit around doing nothing and you’d be housed, fed, and still enjoy your life. They present this argument as if it debunks communism, but I mean hell yeah that sounds great! It is true that under communism there is no punishment for being lazy and not working. . . that’s it. There is no “but” or “however”. That’s a good thing.
The error being made by our friend here is that they think work is a constant, that there will always be a requirement for working in order to keep production going. This simply isn’t true, as human social labor is not the only way to procure resources, modern technological advancements make this obvious. Soon enough, automation will stretch to all corners of production, and the areas that aren’t filled by automation can be filled by those who enjoy that labor and find it fulfilling. There is no need to have factory workers toil away amongst the noise and smog of factories, there is no need to have farmers tend to vast fields under the blistering sun, all of this undesirable labor can be automated. We, humanity, don’t have to do it.
Of course, we haven’t had a massive push towards automation because capitalism recognizes the issues it may cause. If capitalism fully automated the economy, there would be mass unemployment as automation becomes cheaper than human labor, and then there would be recession as now there are millions who cannot buy products to keep businesses alive. However, under a mode of production like communism, this doesn’t happen. Those who are now “unemployed” don’t have to worry. They still get everything they need. Humanity is freed from work, and free to pursue their personal interests, while we have robots do the dirty work of society. Our production is untouched, as it isn’t reliant on buying and selling on a market, and produces simply because we need those resources. This is the ideal, where all labor is consensual, and we are not threatened with starvation and homelessness simply for not wanting to toil for a third of your day, 5 days a week.
So yes, communism does encourage laziness, and this is fine! Those who complain about this are simply blinded by their capitalist realism, their delusion that nothing can replace capitalism, and their life will always be under the hellish conditions of capitalism.
