It's important to remember that an intermediary state - which promotes equity and disintegrates the bourgeoisie -was part of Marx's conception of the progression of a society to full, stateless communism. Where Soviet communism failed was, in part, the transition to that state.
But yeah, I absolutely agree about technology easing the burden of work. I think that without the pressures and stress of making ends meet - doing work that could be meaningless, dangerous, unsatisfying, etc. - much of society would feel more inclined towards kindness, generosity, and enrichment of themselves and others.
I guess the question is, given the ability to do nothing or to do something, what will most people do? Many of us in todays society are conditioned to work, if I was stopped from working tomorrow that would be emotionally disruptive to me, some of my self worth is based on being proud of my career. So its likely I would volunteer, try to be creative in some endeavour. However we also see people in society who appear to have no inclination to work, they arent so much unemployed, as never-employed. This isnt just the very poor, but the very rich too. So where does work ethic come from, given a society of comfort and fairness will we gravitate to creativity, sharing and harmony, or feckless self destruction? I believe its the former, with a subset of the latter, probably not much different than today.