The essay explores Bataille's general economy as the theory of nonproductive expenditure and its implications for a new politics of nature. It suggests that this theory, elaborated by Bataille in the 1940s, can be valid today and applicable in the analysis of the most urgent problems of contemporary humanity such as the COVID-19 pandemic or climate change. The reading of general economy that is presented in this essay evokes the Bataillean 1 The results were obtained in the framework of the grant of the Russian Science Foundation, project No 20-68-46044 "Imaginary Anthropocene: environmental knowledge production and transfers in Siberia in the XX-XXI centuries." 7 eng