But this is a consequence of the estrangement of labour, our 'metabolism' with nature, which thus implies our estrangement from nature, and from our own nature. Hegel, who is the incarnation of the alienated thinker, 'thought revolving within itself', shows this most clearly when he talks about nature as 'the other-being of Spirit'. Although he has a lot to say about nature, which he knows is the presupposition of Mind, it is really the idea of nature with which he is concerned. Hegel's nature moves in fixed cycles, like Aristotle's, without development, ie without the emergence of newness. Thus, the great dialectician is very hostile to any suggestion of evolution in nature.
Development belongs solely to history.
That nature develops, evolves, is now established, of course, and we ourselves are the product of such development. To those whose thinking is bounded by our present alienated form of life, this is incomprehensible, even to a genius like Hegel. Marx's communism has something vital to say about nature. It knows that nature must be such that it contains the potential for human freedom, and that this is hidden by bourgeois fetishised social forms. Humanity emerges from nature, as 'human nature', through social production, which is natural and human-natural.