Pure competition cannot sustain social life, though moderate competition improves it.

Evidence

The ideological stance which holds competition and the ‘struggle for survival’ to be the texture of life is largely inadequate: in so far as it draws upon analogies with the animal world for its legitimation it is quite simply wrong (Bateson 1986 and this volume; Hinde 1986) and if taken literally there is no need to go back to Hobbes to realize that it would make social life impossible, or at least utterly unpleasant. Yet a certain dose of competition is notoriously beneficial in improving performance, fostering technological innovation, bettering services, allocating resources, spreading the fittest genes to later generations, pursuing excellence, preventing abuses of power — in short, in enriching the human lot. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2672

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s claim that when trust collapses (as in Saramago’s blind society), pure struggle makes social life impossible — this passage gives theoretical backing to that reading.