I mean, it still is. As another commenter pointed out, even in foraging societies people can share, so individuals might survive without labour, by the help of others - but only because others are labouring on their behalf.

If everyone stops working, everyone dies.

Labour in a society is about doing your share, even if others have the generosity to give you their food when you lack. And, in turn, you give to them/others when they lack. Or you make an ‘economy’ so you can kind of mix sharing with selfishness and try to make it fair.

Either way, labour has to be done for you to keep living. By you, or by others.

What we have now is a lot of wealth from a lot of labour, and a hugely complicated economy allowing even the fungible trade of such things as ideas, entertainment, trickery, authority and abstract property inheritance. But still, down at the bottom of it, people have to labour so that people can live.

You are precious without working to earn it; what you earn is your share of the ability to live on this difficult earth.