Scarcity makes human existence itself a threat to others and the root of violence

Evidence

The concept of scarcity permits Sartre to articulate human need as a lack which is at one and the same time a relationship to the objects of the outside world and a determinate type of distance from other people as well. Just as the fact of scarcity forces each individual to search desperately for the objects of his need, laboriously to create them out of unfavorable materials and under difficult conditions, so also each object which I can consume is one implicitly wrested from my neighbor; and in a more general way, my very existence, in a world of scarcity, is a threat to my neighbor’s existence, as is his for me. … Thus Manichaeanism and violence have their source in the very contingent structure of the world of matter itself, and it is with the accents of an older rhetoric, the homo homini lupus, that Sartre evokes this absolute otherness imposed on human life by scarcity: “the century would have been a good one, had not man’s cruel, immemorial enemy lain in wait for him, that carnivorous species that has sworn his destruction, that hairless, malignant beast, man himself!” — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 472

Categorization

• XREF: This is Sartre’s materialist grounding of conflict — connects directly to Hobbes’s state of nature as well as to Lukács’s reification as the dialectical frame Jameson works within. — connects to: Most scarcity is socially defined rather than intrinsic to resources — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 387; Scarcity replaces facticity as the concrete framework conditioning human acts — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 471; Societies that devalue and rarely model aggression produce nonviolent people — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 167 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Sartre’s concept of scarcity is defined here as the contingent datum that simultaneously structures need, the object-relation, and interhuman distance.

Broader Connections

• Most scarcity is socially defined rather than intrinsic to resources #complicates (0.82) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 387
• Without charisma, elites resort to manufactured scarcity and physical threat #expands (0.80) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1590
• Societies that devalue and rarely model aggression produce nonviolent people #complicates (0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 167
• Attention scarcity is a capitalist construction, not a universal given #exemplifies (0.75) — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 25
• Scarcity replaces facticity as the concrete framework conditioning human acts #expands (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 471
• Both deprivation and relative gratification explain individual political violence #complicates (0.72)
• Refusing to confront rational murder threatens our humanity itself #expands (0.72)