Even criminal societies require minimal cooperation to function at all.

Evidence

‘According to the trite observation’ — Adam Smith wrote — ‘if there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least… abstain from robbing and murdering one another’ (Smith 1976: 86; see also Saint Augustine in Dunn, this volume). This ‘trite’ observation serves a double purpose: it reminds us that basic forms of cooperation are inevitable if a society is to be at all viable, but it also points out, perhaps unwittingly, that there are instances of cooperation — notably those among robbers and murderers — that we may want to dispose of rather than improve. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2668

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Hardin’s trust-as-encapsulated-interest framing and the reader’s Hobbesian-layer analysis; the robbers’ internal cooperation is the baseline cooperation-without-trust case. — connects to: A small isolated community committed no serious crime without any legal apparatus — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 173
• QUESTION: Saramago’s band of thieves in the novel also cooperate internally while preying on the blind — does that internal cooperation persist or collapse when sight vanishes?