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.
The duties of things like fire fighting and trash collecting should be something every single person who is able is trained to do and participate in collectively. Like this week you’re on trash detail, or this week you’re on fire detail. Things like that which are necessary for all should be the responsibility of all that can do those things which also creates redundancy as well in times of emergency.
Firefighting is a substantially more intensive job then you give it credit for and the vast majority of the population would not be well suited to carrying out all the tasks a firefighter needs to do. The protective suits are 50 pounds on their own, let alone the weight of oxygen tanks, miscellaneous gear, and hoses. Carrying all that and then potentially a whole person in a hellish deadly scenario while not panicking takes a massive amount of training, strength, and resolve.
Societies function far better with specialization anyway, sending an engineer onto trash duty feels like a waste of resources.