Marx's conception of human nature includes human "passions" and "emotions" as fundamental, integrative aspects of our social nature and our human capacity for "free conscious activity." However, "emotion" has been largely excluded from the sociological lexicon and the capacity far conscious action has often been viewed at the level of the individual actor and, moreover, in overly "cognitive" and "rational" terms. As a result, the very reading of classic texts'has been historically biased against the seeing af emotion, even when it is addressed. What difference does the inclusion of emotion in hAarx's conception of human nature make for our understanding of both his theory of estrangement and related work today?

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How do Latvian emigrants’ emotional apprehensions of social and cultural change in post-Soviet Latvia, and the contrasting experience they gain abroad, affect their relationship with the Latvian state and their ongoing emigration status? By contrasting the personal narratives of 59 emigrants with the Latvian state’s public transformation discourse, we argue that the culture the sending state presents to its public—both in its official discourse and day-to-day interactions with civilians—and the emotions this triggers in people based on their everyday life experiences, deepens our understanding of the post-Soviet emigration regime. Specifically, how state discourse and interactions affect feelings of recognition and the related emotions of confidence (particularly, self-confidence), pride, and shame are important for understanding post-Soviet emigration. Exaggerated neoliberal notions of the “West” dominated both the post-Soviet civil discourse and the policies and practices implemented to guide the transition, fashioning an environment where people felt shamed, and their self-confidence was injured. However, emigration and growing confidence in receiving states helped many regain a sense of comfort, self-confidence, and empowerment.

Proponents of the world‐system perspective have argued that the modern world‐system first took shape in Western Europe and the Americas between 1450 and 1650, the “long sixteenth century” (Wallerstein 1974, 1980, 1989). Although social conflict was endemic during the early modern period, “antisystemic” movements emerged only in 1848 (Arrighi, Hopkins, & Wallerstein 1989). Class and status‐based movements subsequently seized state power as a means of changing the inequalities associated with the capitalist world‐system during the next century. However, they found it much more difficult to reduce structural inequality or transform the system than they had imagined, which led to a new round of global protest in 1968. This time movements directed their anger not only at powerful capitalist states in the core but also against states where antisystemic movements had taken power and antisystemic movements that had organized labor unions and political parties. To appreciate these developments, it is useful to recount the history of struggles by social movements in the modern world‐system.

Driven by new conditions of desperation and alienation, mass migration in postwar El Salvador has continued unabated. While this migration could be seen as a way of "opting out" of ongoing class struggle, we argue that it instead represents a critical dissipation of class relations and struggle. In the postwar context, the ruling class and the Salvadoran state now seek to capitalize upon the alienation of its own people and responses to that alienationi.e., upon migration and the remittances it generates. The ruling class has ensured its economic domination regardless of who controls the state. Seeking to legitimize and maximize seizures of citizens' income as it flows across borders as a matter of "economic" and "development" policy, the ruling class has depleted the productive base through which class struggle would ordinarily occur, creating new forces of alienation in El Salvador and extending the need for many Salvadorans to migrate.