> By "an activist group" I mean people who confuse work with slavery.

You mean, people who confuse forced work with slavery.

I think that depends on definition of "forced".

If I stop working, I'll get kicked out of my house and will probably die of hunger. Does it mean I am forced to work?

> Does it mean I am forced to work?

Absolutely yes. You told it yourself, if you stop working you're going to die from hunger. In what sense can you argue "you're free not to work"?

While the question of whether capitalism is slavery is perhaps interesting (and quite a large number of people have answered that question in the affirmative), the system where you are committed, without free consent even as that is constructed within a capitalist framework, to an arrangement where a private party rents out exclusive control of you and your labor for a period of time from the government, and compels you to labor for the benefit of that private party is very different from the “you must find a willing party to give you food, and most of them are only willing to do so for money, and most people are not willing to give you money without some exchange of value” feature of capitalism, in ways which make it fit a much less controversial understanding of slavery than any that include capitalism as a whole.

Its a definition game, but in philosophy and political economy free is "free from other people" not free from nature, as that is impossible.

A lot of people hold that position

You've hit upon the concept of wage slavery.

>will probably die of hunger

It looks like you’re in the US. You’d have to try quite hard to die of malnutrition here.

You can look for another job, though.

Yes, you are forced to work and that's one of the main arguments in favor of a basic income.

I personally find the idea of basic income very interesting (I'm not yet confident it will work in real life though), but that's probably an off-topic for this thread.

Back to your point though: isn't it ironical then that pretty much the only place where a person is not "forced" to work is prison? How's that ever fair?

> If I stop working, I'll get kicked out of my house and will probably die of hunger. Does it mean I am forced to work?

This is such a bad argument in my opinion...living is working...it might not be at a job in an office, but if you want to eat/drink/shelter, you're going to have to work one way or the other...your question kinda seems like complaining about the fact that consuming calories and water and making shelter to live is not forced already, when it is by nature...

The legality of forced work of prisoners is due to an exemption in the 13th amendment.

> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Prison labor is literally slavery.

Please don't do this here.

Well, we all know that Godwin's law works.

I just didn't expect it to kick in so early in the discussion.

Most people wouldn't consider someone to suggest slavery as the solution this early in the discussion either. Godwin's law doesn't work when you are suggesting the same actions Nazis actually took.

You are like the bad guy from Thor Ragnarok. "I don't like to call them slaves, they're prisoners with jobs"