I don't understand the message. Of course it was not voluntary, no drastic change in social structure is
as Cowbee wrote: the 'free market' narrative assumes the market is participatory, and that you can simply opt out ('go live in the woods').
but capitalism doesn't work without a labour market, and the labour market isn't stable without a buffer of un[der]employment. so living outside the market — and general 'propertylessness' — is criminalised or made so inconvenient/unsustainable that you're left with 'the choice' between peonage or starvation. the people who fall into homelessness and houselessness serve as a warning to anyone who might consider 'opting out'.
i don't think anyone genuinely believes this is a real choice, but i've experienced this narrative being used to dismiss critiques of capitalism and wage slavery.
Fair enough
A persistent Liberal narrative is that Capitalism is a system based on voluntary contracts, and therefore participation is voluntary as well.
Fair enough
Nice dungarees and hoodie.
Life was also never voluntary.
Capitalism isn't some unchanging and never-ending fact of existence, it can be replaced.
It can absolutely be superseded, but the concepts underlying it cannot be destroyed, and it cannot be simply erased. Rather, those underlying dynamics must be incorporated into our larger body of concepts. Similarly, capitalism cannot simply erase the foundations of earlier systems, it must adapt to incorporate those concepts, and meet the needs which those systems met - or else those needs will become great enough that they impact or temporarily displace it.
