 Note, in particular, that although Marx’s discussions of alienation often utilise the language of fetishism, not all of them take that form. Consider, for instance, the problematic separation sometimes said to exist between modern individuals and the natural world, as the former think of themselves and behave as if they were isolated, or cut off, or estranged, from the latter. The idea here is reflected in the less ‘Promethean’ moments of Marx’s work, for example, in the suggestion that the appropriate relation between humankind and nature would involve not our instrumental domination of ‘the other’, but rather a sympathetic appreciation of our complex interdependence with the natural world of which we are, in reality, a part. Those moments are perhaps most evident in Marx’s discussion of contemporary ‘ecological’ threats—including deforestation, pollution, and population growth—and typically involve his ‘metabolic’ account of the appropriate relation between humankind and nature (Foster 1999). The inappropriate modern relation between humankind and nature here looks like an example of alienation—there is a problematic separation of self and other—but certain central characteristics of fetishism would appear to be absent. Most obviously, the natural world is not a human creation which has escaped our control; not least, because nature is not a human creation. Moreover, the impact on humankind of this particular separation does not comfortably suit the language of enslavement and domination. Indeed, if anything, our inappropriate separation from the natural world seems to find expression in our own ruthlessly instrumental treatment of nature, rather than in nature’s tyranny over us.