Class-less society is a state-less society. And state-less society was a primitive stage at which division of labor (and therefore classes) wasn't manifested yet because there was no need to a complex organization for available means of production. It is why societies of primitive humans are sometimes described as 'primeval communism' sometimes. It is the reason why Soviet Union didn't call itself class-less state. Soviet Union called itself 'a state of proletariat' (of working class).
State-less society with at the high technology stage could only be achieved by empowering individual to the level at which he/she no longer would resemble the modern definition of what 'human' is. Here we go into firmly transhumanism/posthumanism territory.
Do you want to imagine what such society could like? Imagine a society of people with functional immortality, probably with a consciousness distributed among multiple different platforms at any given time while individual is essentially is an independent entity in economical and/or political sense. It is a a truly class-less and state-less society as each individual have either the ability to achieve what he/she wants. You can say that it is utopia, a society of gods. but I say that it is simply a logical result of human progress which is inevitable in a sense that either we destroy each other before that or we will be there eventually. Astronomers already discovered a thing that could be a Dyson swarm under construction around a distant star, so there is hope that such development level is actually achievable for a sapient life.
But in any case It i the reason why I prefer to speak about transitional forms from capitalism/socialism to a communism as they could be better defined through concepts which are already exist. It is far easier to perceive and relate to.
No, strong work ethics is important concept for communism. And you cannot really have strong work ethics without being rewarded for it in some form. Absolute equality is simply not a thing which communism is about. The concept was of course used extensively in the past because you need to appeal to the destitute people but capitalism in propaganda and capitalism in reality are also quite different, aren't they? Both capitalism and communism are about equality of opportunity but communism is simply closer to actually achieve that.
As I said previously, three most important traits of communist formation are:
1. No private ownership of the means of production so no one would be in position to monopolize the production of anything. In fact the access to the facilities with limited available 'throughput' would be probably one of the form of 'status consumption' in such society. More people could design and build furniture and less people could design and build spaceships.
2. Lack of exploitation of a human by another human (I hope that when we reach this point it would be 'of one sapient being by another sapient being'). This concept is also dependent on the third one. No one is forced to work to survive and to reach a socially acceptable standard of living. How much it would be? Well, it would depend on how well society is developed and how much resources are available to it. And the last important thing here is that any work relations between humans are voluntary but not necessary equal (think Sisko restaurant in Star Trek DS9).
3. Third concept is hardest one actually. It is lack of 'alienated labor'. Alienated labor is a labor in which worker is divested from the results of his labor because he either do not own the final product and/or because he only produce a small part of final product which is meaningless to him without a whole. So it is problem about division of labor more or less. Robotics and automation helps here of course but complexity of modern and especially future tech would require a cooperation between multiple humans for a very long time (until class/stateless society akin to the described above would be possible). This conflict require both a concept of communal property (in addition to personal/private one) and some form of regulating body/state to resolve such 'propertiary' conflicts (and other stuff which would require organization of large groups of humans like maybe military or space exploration and stuff).
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