In response to [log in to unmask] writes:  
If economics is a theory of choice, tell me how workers got to choose their   
working hours in the 19th C., when they had to fight for an 8 hour day?  
  
  
I'm not sure I understand your point, Michael.  Only an ideologue (and a stupid one) would
say that choice in capitalist societies is (or has ever been) free in an absolute sense
(or equitably distributed among people).  As James Ahiakpor suggested, to say choice is to
say constrained choice.  Choices are constrained by social conditions and, ultimately, by
the laws of nature.  No serious economist I can think of implies otherwise.
  
For example: Didn't Marx view distribution under capitalism (the collective aggregation of
individual choices through markets or through legal and political mechanisms) as
ultimately constrained by the "distribution of ownership over the conditions of
production," i.e., the social relations of production?  And didn't he view the "collective
choice" of social relations of production, the choice of economic structure (made
indirectly through the more direct choice of legal and political institutions), as
ultimately constrained by the productive force of labor in a society?
  
Julio Huato