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

[Voyou]

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/>