Work and Nature Our economic life is ultimately a function of our interactions with nature. If Marx held that nature was our “inorganic body,” to be exploited without consequence, we must now accept that it is an active force that provides the overarching structure for our economic life. We are not in control of nature but merely, like ants on the volcano, struggling to make our lives within the space that nature allows to us. Consequently, the world of work is always subject to our changing relationship to nature. The pandemic underlines the way in which our economic decisions take…