User talk:Regainfo

Letter by Kathryn Mills to me on 13 nov 2007

Hello Remo,

Thank you for your notes to me and to Nik.

I just read the English version of the draft article on Wikipedia. I can see that your goal is to add interest with a direct quote from Wright, and that's a great idea. On the other hand, I think the reference to anarchism quoted in that letter from 1956 is misleading in the context of a short article that tries to sum up what Wright was about. I think the reason Wright wrote that he was quite serious, right after saying he was a "goddamned anarchist" is that he knew that his close friends, Harvey and Bette (who were like uncle and aunt to me) would have responded to that statment about being a "goddamned anarchist" by rolling their eyes and/or laughing. They knew him and his work well enough to respond that way to that statement.

The main point from the letter from 1956 that relates to the comments in the article seems to be the part in which Wright says he thinks there's more of value in Marxist writings than in all the "routineers of J.S. Mill" put together, and the part about wanting to work out his ideas in a clean cut way. It would be fine with me -- I don't think it would be misleading at all -- if you quoted those parts of the letter, but I don't agree with the idea of quoting the casual reference to anarchism in the context of the article for Wikipedia.

Another alternative you may want to consider is quoting a passage from one of Wright's letters to Tovarich, which are parts of a manuscript that Wright wanted to publish eventually -- and for that reason I think they reflect his nuanced thinking. They can be easily found by consulting page 377 of the index in the book of letters and autobiographical writings.

Please let me know what you think. I hope that my responses are helpful to you.

Thank you very much for your interest in working on this article and for contacting us about it.

With best wishes, Kate

Letter by Kathryn Mills to me on 14 nov 2007

Dear Remo,

Below is the information and the quotation from a letter to Tovarich, as you requested. And thanks for sending a copy of what you wanted to put on the linked site, Wikisource, from my own letter. If you're sure you want to include a quote from that, then it's fine with me.

Thanks again for all your time and attention concerning this entry about C. Wright. To answer your question, yes, it does seem positive to me, and I especially like the way you acknowledged the debate about his point of view. I'll look forward to seeing the finalized version when it's posted.

With all best wishes, Kate

Kate Mills

Citation for book:

C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings, edited by Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills, introduction by Dan Wakefield (University of California Press, 2000.)

Additional information in case it's of interest:

The softcover edition in English was published in 2001. The Spanish translation was published by Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico, in 2004).

Page 218 for quotes from the letter to Harvey and Bette Swados, dated November 3, 1956

Page 252 for the following quotes from a letter to Tovarich (autobiographical essay) dated Fall 1957 which is entitled "On Who I Might Be and How I Got That Way":

"You've asked me, 'What might you be?' Now I answer you: 'I am a Wobbly.' I mean this spiritually and politically. In saying this I refer less to political orientation that to political ethos, and I take Wobbly to mean one thing: the opposite of bureaucrat. […] I am a Wobbly, personally, down deep, and for good. I am outside the whale, and I got that way through social isolation and self-help. But do you know what a Wobbly is? It's a kind of spiritual condition. Don't be afraid of the word, Tovarich. A Wobbly is not only a man who takes orders from himself. He's also a man who's often in the situation where there are no regulations to fall back upon that he hasn't made up himself. He doesn't like bosses –capitalistic or communistic – they are all the same to him. He wants to be, and he wants everyone else to be, his own boss at all times under all conditions and for any purposes they may want to follow up. This kind of spiritual condition, and only this, is Wobbly freedom."