Nicholas Xenos’s Scarcity and Modernity is a sharp work of political theory concerned with one of modernity’s most basic organising myths.

Scarcity isn't a simple economic fact. There is not enough, therefore society must compete. So, Xenos looks at how scarcity is produced as a cultural, moral, and political framework. Who gets to define need? Who benefits when desire is understood as endless? What kinds of authority are justified when society is taught to experience lack as its founding condition?

This is very much for readers interested in political economy, modernity, ideology, liberalism, capitalism, social hierarchy, and the intellectual history of “need” as a governing concept. It has that late-80s/early-90s theory texture: historically grounded, conceptually dense, and alert to the way apparently common-sense economic ideas become moral instruction. 

Routledge paperback, first published 1989. Printed in Great Britain by T. J. Press. Good second-hand condition, with light cover wear, minor edge/corner handling, and some page/corner wear visible.