Socialism isn't the abolition of labor. That would be silly. It's a redirection of our energy towards meeting society's needs. Compare that to our current system, where a large portion of a day's work is spent enriching the holder of capital. Those who have nothing to sell but their own labor (they lack the capital necessary to acquire means of production) are forced to accept "voluntary" contracts where they are compensated at less than the value their work produces. This alienation is something akin to slavery, except that we can choose our plantation.

I won't drag this thread deeply off course with a rundown of Marxist thought, but if you're interested in some light reading (~60 pages) "An Introduction to Marxist Theory" by Ernest Mandel elaborates upon this in a digestible manner. There's also Paul Cockshott's "Towards a New Socialism", which explores the implementation details of proposed alternatives to capitalism. He writes about how me might "maintain a high standard of living and somehow don't have to work [for a privileged few] for a living."

Why exactly? There's different degrees of slavery and independence, it's not black and white. Poor people don't really have a choice with their lives, they do whatever people command to them so they can just to get enough to get food.

Some black slaves in the US South got to live in the house, eat and drink with their masters, whip other slaves, and maybe even got an education. They lived in luxury compared to the field workers.

They were still slaves.