Harriet Tubman, a 19th-century black woman who broke law by escaping from slavery, and broke the law again and again by helping other blacks escape from slavery, recently beat other historic American women in an informal contest for a campaign, Women on 20s, that wants to put the second sex on the $20 bill. The women Tubman beat in the contest included Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, and Clara Barton. A total of 600,000 votes were cast in this contest, and impressively Tubman claimed 118,328 of them.
Even Hillary Clinton thinks it would be “awesome” and “well deserved—and about time” idea to put Tubman on $20 bills. And petition has been sent to President Obama to make this idea a reality.
However, in a post on the Washington Post, Feminista Jones makes an argument that’s worth considering. She believes that replacing the image of Andrew Jackson with that of Harriet “Moses” Tubman would be inappropriate, for a compelling reason. The institution of slavery was capitalistic, Tubman rebelled against this system (she was a thief, she stole property, she was wanted by the law), and therefore it’s not right for her to be honored by a major symbol of this exploitative system.
Jones argues:
On one hand, replacing the face of Andrew Jackson—a man whose wealth was made on the backs of enslaved black people—with Tubman’s image sounds like an idyllic reversal of fortune. But in examining Tubman’s life, it’s clear that putting her face on America’s currency would undermine her legacy.
Some might disagree with Jones’s logic by pointing out that Abraham Lincoln’s image is on the penny and the $5 bill, as well as rarer forms of American currency, and Lincoln signed the proclamation that made slavery illegal. Fair enough.
But putting aside the fact that Lincoln, a railroad lawyer—which today is much the same as being a lawyer for Wall Street interests—was not really opposed to slavery (“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it…”), and also the core of Jones’s argument, which might simply be more provocative than it is substantive, there is an important and deeper reason for objecting to this honor, an honor bequeathed on dead national heroes or leaders.
The thing that many Americans want to believe is that slavery was somehow an anomaly, something that was outside of capitalism, and was eventually abolished because it stood against the noble principles of the free market. But as economists like Ha-Joon Chang, Dani Rodrik, and Thomas Piketty have maintained, slaves were actually the real deal—they were capital assets (like bonds, shares, or homes) and, as a consequence, were often used as collateral for bank loans.
Fortunes rose and fell based on the status of this class of assets. And to flee from your slavery was exactly the same as stealing a car today. Tubman was wanted not as a rebel but as a common criminal. And this fact must not be forgotten if we are to understand not only the real impact the institution of slavery had on its day and still has on ours, but also, more importantly, to understand a myth that’s kept capitalism running for so long. That is the myth of progress.
What is this myth? It’s one that always says: Despite all of the horrors in the past, capitalism does actually move forward, does improve, does become less cruel, and does become more democratic. Placing Tubman in the $20 bill reinforces this wack myth and it obscures the real link between the past and the present. By following this link, we are forced to stay awake, forced to see that the capitalism Tubman rebelled against in the 19th century is still very much with us today. Progress is an illusion for billions of human beings.
Finally, we do not have capitalism to thank for social progress. Yes, capitalism always wants to take the credit. But almost all of the democratic gains in our society were made with stiff resistance from this system. If capitalism had its way, children would still be in American factories.
