The real story of coke

Coca-cola is probably the single best known brand name in the world. It is a soft drink, now 99 percent sugar water that began as a 19th century mixture of cocaine and cola and was pushed as a patent medicine. How did its makers rise to become the sixth greatest US multinational?

The history of Coke is a history of US capitalism.

The company’s first boss was Asa Candler, a Methodist fundamentalist, who told Coca-Cola salesmen to see themselves as mission aries selling “the American Dream”. The company was based in Atlanta, a state renowned for allowing child labour. Candler became mayor of Atlanta in 1908 and de fended his right to em ploy children:

“The younger a boy begins work”, he said, “the more beautiful does his life become”.

Coca-Cola has con tinued to profit since from treating its workers appallingly.

In 1969 the company’s Florida citrus groves were found to be crowding 6,000 migrant workers of all ages into insanitary barracks. It paid them a minimal wage.

When Coke workers in Guatemala tried to organise in 1975, the death squads moved in.

Death

Union leaders were tortured to death. One local activist revealed, “Coca-Cola is now commonly known as the ‘glint of death’”.

But the company has always been able to ride out bad publicity.

Its bosses have main tained the closest relations with governments. They have helped choose “friendly” presidents and thrown considerable resources into the campaigns of White House candidates.

The close drinking friends of past and present Coca-Cola bosses include presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton.

This tie up between company and state ensured Coca-Cola expanded along with US imperialism during and after the Second World War.

Coca-Cola salesmen became “technical ob servers” in the US army, with uniforms and military ranks.

The “Coca-Cola colo nels” supplied drinks to the troops and surveyed “liberated” countries as prospective new mar kets.

But the company was not exclusively tied to the US.

On the contrary, the Coca-Cola empire in Nazi Germany dis played the swastika alongside Coke adverts. The head of the German subsidiary proclaimed, the “deepest admiration” for Hitler.

Wherever German troops overran territory, the German arm of Coca-Cola followed and set up plants using concentration camp labour.

The makers of Coke have been more than happy to live with fascist regimes and military dictatorships.

In fact, they have helped dictators come to power if it seemed a way to ensure continuing profits.

In Guatemala in 1954, the company which ran the Coca-Cola bottling Plants — United Fruit — joined in the military overthrow of a democratic regime.

After the revolution in Nicaragua in 1979, Coca-Cola backed the owner of its main bot tling plant who became a general in the vicious right wing Contra army.

The company had lost control of its plants in the revolution and it wanted them back.

Coke continues to be marketed on the back of a myth of peace and international harmony — the Myth of American imperialism itself.

The true story of Coca-Cola could not be more different.

Socialist Worker | 1995

By Fran Cetti