[lbo-talk] "Ruling Class" as Agent?????

Voyou voyou1 at gmail.com
Fri Dec 10 10:40:25 PST 2010


On Fri, 2010-12-10 at 12:18 -0500, c b wrote:
> 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 ?

The OED gives the earliest use of "agent" as someone who acts on behalf of a principal as 1593, and the earliest use of "agent" as someone who acts or exercises power (as opposed to being used or acted on) to 1600. So the legal usage predates what you're calling the "postmodern" usage by a whole seven years.

http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/display/50004315?keytype=ref&ijkey=enP14Sc5LqXT6

--

"I had never understood why Socialism need imply the arraying

of oneself in a green curtain or a terra-cotta rug, or the

cultivation of flowing locks, blue shirts, and a peculiar cut

of clothes." -- Isabel Meredith, _A Girl Among the Anarchists_ Voyou Desoeuvre <http://blog.voyou.org/>



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