The basic form of my question is: In a communist society, what would happen to those who chose not to work?
Marx seems to have supposed that humans are innately predisposed to, under the right conditions, enjoy working. I do not agree with this; while I do think that, with ideal conditions, many humans would choose to engage in some sort of lucrative work, there would still be some whose 'perfect life' would consist of engaging in relatively unproductive pursuits, such as playing chess all the time. There is nothing wrong with this, but it does make the idea of a society wherein everyone works productively infeasible.
As such, I think that in order to make such a society work, there would have to be some sort of consequence for not working. However, that is barely any better than capitalism, as it still forces everyone to work, and in careers they might not have chosen for themselves (playing chess can be a career, but in such a society it would likely not be available). The only difference would be that wealth would be more evenly distributed, but that is not significant enough of an improvement to justify implementing the system. I imagine that if Marx had held different views of human nature, he might have come up with a slightly different idea, or have stopped at the idea of socialism (wherein people can choose not to work, and as a consequence simply live a very Spartan lifestyle).
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