2019 General Election: Every Cook Can Govern
The 2019 General Election has come down as they often have recently to an almost Presidential battle between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson and which is best fit to govern.
My own preference is well known but there is a much wider issue.
Governing is not just about two men, or indeed men at all.
There is nothing so special about either candidate for No.10 that suggests that others could not do the role equally well.
CLR James made the point in his analysis of ancient Greece, which was headed Every Cook Can Govern.
He noted that in ancient Greece, administrative roles were determined by, in effect, drawing names of citizens out of a hat and letting them get on with it.
No doubt some were better than others but the point is that all had a human capacity of some kind to do the job.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1956/06/every-cook.htm
E P Thompson writing on In Defence of the Jury made a similar point
…beyond the comprehension not only of our betters but of almost any of us these latter days (is) the quaint archaic notion that anyone-randomly selected- might be able to perform a human sized office or role. We have less sense of ourselves than villagers in Medieval times, who rotated parish offices.
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