> CB: It defies common sense to think that the capitalist ruling class
> has without class consciousness and a high level of class unity won
> the Cold War and retained dominance of the states of the imperialist
> power nations over the last 100 years in the face of conscious,
> Marxist led working class challenges. There is all kinds of evidence
> that the ruling class is centralized.
>
> As to the term "agent", the ruling class is the "principle". It has
> lots of "agents". A principle directs and agent. A principle is the
> subject. This is the legal use of "principle/agent" ( See the law of
> agency). Post modernists or whoever have given the term "agent" the
> opposite meaning from this legal meaning.
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There's just as much evidence that the capitalist class is disunified as regards distributed cognitions of interests.
^^^ CB: I'd say the evidence is overwhelming in support of the proposition that the ruling class is more unified than the ruled class when it comes to its class interests vis-a-vis the ruled class' interests. That's the only issue of unity pertinent - the relativity of class unities on issues of irreconcilable class antagonisms. The level of unity the ruling class must maintain is greater unity than the ruled class.
What is the evidence that the ruling class relatively disunified with respect to its interests vis-a-vis the ruled class ?
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As for the *principal*- agent issue; why should the legal theorists thick descriptions of the issues involved trump any other theorists contestations and descriptions of the terms?
^^^^^ CB: The legal usage has been around for longer than the post-modern usage. Why confuse things by giving a term an opposite meaning from its existing meaning ? Of course the legal term can't trump anybody giving any meaning they want for a word. But why do it ?
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There does not appear to be any evidence that agency is an ultimately nomological term. Nor is there any political obligation to believe in the manner in which legal theorists inscribe liberal notions of agency for the purposes of achieving specific political goals.
^^^^^ CB Well, the post-modernists are actually liberals , too. So, they inscribe liberal notions of agency , too. An agent is an individual, so it's some form of liberal individualism, a core bourgeois liberal concept. Post modernism provides no political advance over liberalism.