Commodity Fetishism in Sneaker Culture: How Our Obsession with Shoes Became a Symbol of Power

Last week, I walked into my daughter’s basketball game sporting my matching Nike sneakers, and a fellow parent joked that I must have bought them just to match their green jerseys. Little did they know, my love for sneakers runs deep – and it's not just any sneaker, but the rarest of the rare, the ones that require a special app or an exclusive raffle to get your hands on. My office space is a shrine to my shoes, with custom shelves and LED lighting illuminating my coveted Nike SBs and Jordans. It may seem excessive, but as Karl Marx once said, "A commodity appears…a very trivial thing, and easily understood." But is it really that simple?

Marx went on to describe commodity fetishism as the process of giving "magic qualities" to an object, where the human labor required to make it is lost once it becomes associated with monetary value. Under capitalism, once an object becomes a commodity, it is fetishized, and consumers come to believe that the object has value in and of itself, separate from the labor that produced it. In other words, we ignore or remain unaware of the conditions under which our precious commodities are made.

I've read articles and watched documentaries exposing the atrocious conditions under which my beloved kicks are manufactured, but it hasn't influenced me to seek out more conscientiously made shoes. Instead, I'm willing to pay $120 for a pair of shoes that likely cost $20 to manufacture. Why do I do it? Maybe Marx can help me understand: "There is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things." If I think about my relationship with shoes and what influenced me to become a collector, was it my love for basketball, hip-hop culture, music, or the cultural icons attached to the Nike brand? Yes, to all. 

However, for me, the most poignant influence that impacted my love of sneakers goes back to my childhood, when new Nike shoes equaled power and popularity. As a kid, my beat-up Adidas high tops from a neighbor's yard sale made me feel poor and excluded. The materialism of having new Nike shoes empowered the kids in my class while simultaneously disempowering me. As Sellnow states, "Hegemony…supports the interests of those in power, and it also privileges the interpretations of artifacts, objects, events, and practices that maintain the existing power."

Nike shoes equaled power to me and even though I know better now and should spend my money on needed items, there’s a feeling attached to the shoes, a feeling of power, and power feels good in every color. 

Do you have a commodity that you collect that makes you feel empowered? Is there something that gives you that magical connection Marx wrote about?