Commodity Fetishism, Conspicuous Consumption and the Supreme MetroCard
At its cheapest and lowest quantity, the advertising rate for a standard, four-color, single-side advertisement on 50,000 Metropolitan Transportation Association MetroCards is an even $25,500 (MTA).
In July of 2012, “the latest frontier in the MTA’s campaign to squeeze new revenue from the transit system” became the ability to advertise on both the front and back of the iconic yellow card—starting at $112,000 for 250,000 cards (Mann). MetroPCS, Audible, and HBO’s Game of Thrones have all endorsed full MetroCard advertisements through the years; all randomly distributed throughout the MTA system.
No New Yorker’s wallet is safe: gracing mine currently is a Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show-branded card with a coupon on the reverse side that expired long before it was even issued to me.
But there is one MetroCard, however, that stands out from the rest, living in infamy among collectors and everyday commuters alike: the limited-edition Supreme MetroCard.
Supreme is a clothing manufacturer known for utilizing scarcity to drive up the value of its branded products. Memorable merchandise includes a branded clay brick along with a modestly-branded plan white tee shirt—both selling for upwards of $1,000 each (Tiffany).
When Supreme and the MTA’s tracks finally crossed, the result was fascinating to many—and likely the worst nightmare of Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen.
A commodity, as defined by Karl Marx, satisfies a human desire. Supreme capitalizes on the difference between a commodity’s use value and exchange value—its intrinsic worth in contrast with its perceived value in a capitalist society. Commodity fetishism is what creates the gulf between the two. What makes the vast inflation of the price of a Supreme MetroCard so illogical or absurd is fully understood and utilized by Supreme.
At its very essence, a MetroCard is a piece of vinyl and a magnetized strip, manufactured in large quantities and used by consumers to store value that can be exchanged for entrance into the MTA system. Its usefulness simply as a yellow rectangle is negligible; however, its ability to transfer value gives this commodity a value of its own. It acts in the place of money; itself intrinsically worthless but representative of some amount of perceived value.
In this way, the MetroCard has no first-order use value but takes on use value when its larger role in the grand scheme of currency is considered. Its exchange value becomes its primary use value when put into the context of a greater capitalist system.
The exchange value of a MetroCard in this higher sense, then, depends entirely on the amount of currency represented on the card. This makes the humble MetroCard a useful, but largely unfetishized commodity—that is, until another element is introduced to make the card desirable outside of its role as a conduit of value transfer.
This is where Supreme comes in.
Though many ads on MetroCards are simply seen as a nuisance, the Supreme MetroCard, introduced in July of 2017, was the latest in a long line of commodities fetishized—according to Marx—far beyond their traditional use values.
The card was red and white, with “Supreme” written on the side opposite the iconic yellow logo. It was released in limited numbers in stations across New York City and sold for $5.50.
The cards were loaded with enough fare for two trips in the MTA system. Their intrinsic value—on a primary level as red strips of vinyl and on a secondary level as a means for holding and transferring value—was rather low.
In the ensuing weeks, Supreme MetroCards resold for as much as $999.97 on eBay.
This valuation fails to correlate with any conception of the intrinsic value of a MetroCard—a prime example of the fetishism Marx argues destroys the link between utility and value in a capitalist society. The “mystical” x-factor that makes consumers amenable to paying almost a thousand dollars for an aftermarket MetroCard: the combination of artificial scarcity, brand recognition and other societal factors that amounts to a true capitalist fetish.
One of the contributing factors to the fetishization of commodities is elaborated upon by later economist Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class. Like Capital, Veblen’s work lampoons its titular subject, arguing that “the emergence of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership,” a statement reminiscent of Marx’s conception of the bourgeoisie and their reliance on capitalism. Conspicuous consumption—the pursuit of commodities regarded to be of great value in order to display wealth and power in a capitalist society—is characteristic of Veblen’s leisure class.
This helps to further explain the extreme overvaluation of the Supreme MetroCard—and all other merchandise with unequal use and exchange values. While a MetroCard would simply allow a working-class member of society to access public transportation, a Supreme MetroCard appeals to those of higher socioeconomic status because of its perceived exchange value. It is rare, and it is expensive—a perfect display of wealth and power for a class of people with nothing better to do than flaunt.
Through Marx’s theory of commodity fetishization, developed and augmented by Veblen’s concept of conspicuous consumption, the frenzy surrounding the release of the Supreme MetroCard—almost religious, as Marx asserts—makes perfect sense. A capitalist culture imbued the brand of Supreme and all of their merchandise with a value far exceeding their utility and total labor necessary to produce them, and the leisure class bought Supreme MetroCards for $999.97 because the perceived “value” of displaying their wealth and power made the price tag more than worth it.
The other day, I saw a rat faithfully pulling a MetroCard into a hole in the subway station tile. I don’t know why it did so; the card’s utility to that particular rat was completely foreign to me. I imagined that it was a special Supreme card, perhaps dropped accidentally on to the subway tracks by a careless subway-goer. I can only hope the rat knew how much money was paid for that little red card.
Works Cited
- Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class. London: Penguin Classics, 1994. Print.
- Marx, Karl. Capital. London: Penguin Classics, 1994. Print.
- Tiffany, Kaitlyn. “The MTA’s Supreme-branded MetroCard is a hot commodity.” The Verge, https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/20/14674604/mta-supreme-metro-cards-nyc-subway-resale. Accessed 26 April 2019.
- “Advertise on MetroCard.” MTA, http://web.mta.info/nyct/RatestoAdvertiseonMetroCard.html. Accessed 27 April 2019.
- Mann, Ted. “MetroCards Get Advertising Makeover.” WSJ, https://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/07/18/metrocards-get-advertising-makeover. Accessed 27 April 2019.
- “Supreme Metro Card NYC Subway MTA Train Pass New York City Metrocard SS17 X.” eBay, https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supreme-Metro-Card-NYC-Subway-MTA-Train-Pass-New-York-City-Metrocard-SS17-X-/282370033138. Accessed 26 April 2019.