The basis of our coalition

“Nature is [man’s] body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die.”

— Karl Marx

Welcome to the Erthly Collective blog. This is our very first post, and we want to start by laying a foundation—not just for what we’ll be discussing here, but for the work we believe is necessary to rebuild our narratives with each other and with the Earth. We’re not just here to analyze the world as it is; we’re here to imagine what it could be.

Through Marx’s words, it reminds us that nature is not external to us—it is us. And yet, the world we live in is structured to create separation. We have inherited systems that have not only fractured our relationship with nature but have also reinforced estrangement from one another.

Erthly Collective exists to demonstrate what reimagining and using different perspectives across disciplines can look like in practice. We don’t just talk about these ideas—we embody them. As co-founders, we come from distinct yet deeply connected perspectives, and our collaboration is itself a demonstration of this approach. And we will apply this to analyzing Marx’s quote, exploring how his insights shape our understanding of estrangement and reimagining new ways of being:

• Emily considers how capitalist logic has reduced nature to a transactional entity, its value dictated by market-driven frameworks;

• Imani observes how the same structures that commodify nature also commodify human narratives, isolating individuals through divisions of wealth, identity, and labor.

Together, these perspectives reveal that estrangement is not just a feeling—it is a condition imposed by the systems we navigate. And more importantly, they guide us toward the necessary work of communion.

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Emily: The Commodification of Nature

The Industrial Revolution marked a rupture in our relationship with nature. Landscapes that had once sustained communities were stripped, diverted, and reshaped to serve an economic agenda. Enlightenment thinking had already framed humans as separate from and dominant over nature, and industrialization only deepened this divide.

Though the smokestacks of the industrial era may no longer fill every skyline, their ideology persists. In many parts of the world, the air is still thick with smoke, and everywhere, we remain entrenched in a worldview that values nature only when it can be measured, priced, and traded. Even global climate solutions—however well-intentioned—often reduce ecosystems to carbon sequestration and biodiversity credits, treating nature as a ledger to be balanced rather than a living force intertwined with our survival.

This logic remains rooted in the same economic structures that have long treated the Earth as a commodity, rather than as something relational, interconnected, and inherently valuable. Marx was not sentimental about nature, but he understood that severing our relationship with it has consequences.

Environmental harm is not just damage to an external 'other'—it is a rupture in the web of relationships that sustains all life, including our own.

If we are to truly address environmental degradation, we must go beyond mitigation strategies that still center profit and efficiency. We need to dissolve the human-nature dichotomy altogether, rediscovering knowledge systems that see nature not as a resource to be managed, but as something we are intrinsically bound to.

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Imani: The Estrangement Between People and Place

Marx spends a considerable amount of his work critiquing the institutions and systems that structure society. He challenges the relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, property owners and the propertyless, the worker and their labor, and most notably, humanity and nature. In his Theory of Alienation, he describes how capitalism does more than exploit labor—it severs people from their communities, their sense of self, and their relationship with the Earth. Profit and production are placed at the heart of society, and as a result, people are removed from their connection to human nature, to one another, and to the land that sustains them.

Estrangement manifests in nearly every aspect of our world. It is visible in the divisions imposed by race, class, and gender—differences that should enrich human experience but instead become the basis for isolation and hierarchy. It is present in the way wealth dictates access to resources, where accumulation is prioritized over community well-being. And it is deeply tied to how we relate to nature—not as something we coexist with, but as something to extract from.

Capitalism has framed domination as the ultimate form of power: domination over land, over people, over nature itself.

This has led to a world where profit takes precedence over humanity, where the destruction of ecosystems is justified in the name of growth, and where wealth dictates who gets to live a life of security and who does not. But Marx challenges us to see these conditions not as inevitable, but as constructs—ones that can be dismantled and reimagined.

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Reclaiming Communion

Estrangement may define the world we have inherited, but it does not have to define the world we build. The challenge before us is not just to address environmental harm, but to reimagine our entire way of relating—to each other, to nature, and to the systems we have been conditioned to accept as unchangeable.

At Erthly Collective, we believe that change begins with narrative. The stories we tell shape the systems we sustain. If estrangement is a condition imposed by extractive systems, then communion is the antidote.

By embracing knowledge systems that honor relationality, by seeing difference as a space for learning rather than division, and by recognizing nature as an extension of ourselves, we can begin to restore what has been fractured.

This is the work ahead of us—not just to critique the systems that have estranged us, but to actively rebuild relationships grounded in interdependence, care, and reciprocity. Marx’s words remind us that our separation from nature is neither natural nor inevitable. And as we reclaim our place within the living fabric of the Earth, we begin the process of communion once more.

And that begins with connection.

Marx, K. (1844). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm