[Ciepac-i] Chiapas Today 554: Coca Cola, the antisocial and psychopathic corporation (Part 1 of 3)
 
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 01:47:53 -0600 (CST)


"Chiapas Today" Bulletin No. 554
CIEPAC; CHIAPAS, MIXICO

COCA COLA, THE ANTISOCIAL AND PSYCHOPATHIC CORPORATION
PART 1 OF 3
Miguel Pickard - 10-Jan-2008 -  num.554
ciepac, San Cristsbal de Las Casas, Chiapas

Summary

The Coca Cola Company has been soundly criticized for business practices
that undermine human, labor and environmental rights. In this series of
essays, we update information on the corporation and ask whether
corporations in general can be influenced by boycotts and other actions
carried out by organized civil society in an effort to lessen the
corporate world's impact on the planet, on workers and on consumers.

As a psychopathic creature, the corporation can neither recognize nor
act upon moral reasons to refrain from harming others. Nothing in its
legal makeup limits what it can do to others in pursuit of its selfish
ends and it is compelled to cause harm when the benefits of doing so
outweigh the costs...The corporation, like the psychopathic personality
it resembles, is programmed to exploit others for profit. [Bakan, 60, 69]

Introduction (1)

Coca Cola is one of the best known brands in the world, with a presence
in almost all of the 194 countries in existence today. Its ability to
penetrate communities in the farthest reaches of the planet is
astonishing. It is estimated that each day the world consumes more than
one billion cans or bottles of Coca Cola, the equivalent of 12,500 per
second. Its ubiquity and demand are maintained by the billions of
dollars spent each year on advertising. Advertising has succeeded in
associating Coca Cola in the consumer's mind with a healthy life,
friendship, pleasure, sports, happy memories, personal improvement and,
above all, happiness.

However, the millions of dollars spent on advertising have not been able
to prevent Coca Cola's growing association with darker images: antiunion
repression, environmental destruction, and threats to the health of
children and adults. With the goal of revealing these negative and
frequently ignored aspects, CIEPAC published a thirteen-chapter in-depth
look at Coca Cola on its web site between 2003 and 2005.

A fresh look at this corporation can be justified for several reasons.
First, we want to show that Coca Cola is a prototypical corporation and,
in this respect, its practices are not an exception but, unfortunately
for the planet, the rule among modern corporations. To back up this
statement, we quote the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit
for Profit and Power by Joel Bakan, professor of law and an authority on
judicial matters. As we will see, Coca Cola is an example of the
corporation(2) that knows neither limits to its voracious appetite for
profits, nor any altruistic principles that stand in the way of its
economic ends. It is an irrational and unreflective being that leaves in
its wake significant damage to society.

Second, another look is called for because Mexico consumes more Coca
Cola per person than any other country in the world. A single Mexican
corporation, FEMSA, is today the second largest bottler of Coca Cola in
the world and the largest in Latin America. For this reason, it is
important to have a deeper understanding of the impact this product and
corporation are having, thanks in great part Mexicans' consumption of
Coke. Third, it is reasonable to review society's response to the many
criticisms that Coca Cola's activities have generated. In this regard,
we are interested in knowing the results of the worldwide boycott of its
products: What has been its reach? How has it affected the corporation?
What substantive changes has the boycott achieved in the business
practices of this prototypical corporation? Have there been notable
changes in the corporation's activities in recent years? Are more
forceful measures called for?

Coca Cola is one example among many of how corporations function under
modern capitalism. In this sense, Coke is not an exception because of
its enormous size and the ubiquity of its products. Corporations act
with a single goal: to separate people from their money, pillage their
natural resources, violate ethical and moral principles, and
"externalize"(3) or impose whatever costs it can on society, workers,
and even on consumers, all in the name of profit.

Certain relatively new conditions make the "normal" functioning of the
large corporations even more oppressive than before. One of the most
important is the environmental devastation we are facing. Corporations'
activities are one of the reasons we face an environmental crisis of
planetary dimensions. The egoistic interests of the corporations are an
impediment to actions that are urgently required. Another characteristic
of our times is the penetration of neoliberal thinking into the
economic, political, and cultural space, which has led the state to
abdicate its theoretical role as guardian of the nation's "best
interests." Today, on the contrary, the state has not only progressively
backed away from exercising control over the abuses committed by the
corporations, it has acted in open collusion to further their
destructive endeavors.

The corporation as a psychopathic person

The term psychopathic refers to a person who suffers a mental illness or
psychic aberration which, in spite of the integrity of his perceptual
and mental functions, causes the pathological alteration of his social
conduct.

The term psychopathic is generally applied to human beings. However, it
is valid to apply it to the activities of corporations, since
corporations are, legally speaking, precisely that - persons. Around the
middle of the 19th century, courts in the United States and Europe, by
means of a

Bizarre legal alchemy, [...] had fully transformed the corporation into
a 'person' with its own identityand empowered [...] to conduct business
in its own name, acquire assets, employ workers, pay taxes, and go to
court to assert its rights and defend its actions. [Bakan, 16]

This new legal creature quickly transformed itself into the being we
know today, incapable of acting "sociably" with the world around it. By
1933, the Supreme Court of the United States commented in a legal
judgment that the corporations were literally "Frankenstein monsters,"
capable of committing evil acts. [Bakan 19] The growing fury on the part
of civil society regarding the antisocial conduct of the corporations
led its executives to disguise these legal monstrosities, largely
through public-relations campaigns regarding "corporate social
responsibility," in order to convince the public that corporations are
"responsible and transparent citizens." However

Corporate social responsibility is their new creed, a self-conscious
corrective to earlier greed-inspired visions of the corporation. Despite
this shift, the corporation itself has not changed. It remains, as it
was at the time of its origins as a modern business institution in the
middle of the 19th century, a legally designated 'person' designed to
valorize self interests and invalidate moral concern. Most people would
find this 'personality' abhorrent, even psychopathic, in a human being,
yet curiously we accept it in society's most powerful institution.
[Bakan 28]

Coca Cola in Mexico and the world: some basic facts

The headquarters of Coca Cola in Atlanta in the United States, controls
the concentrated "secret" syrup from which all Coca Cola in the word is
made. In spite of its global reach, it is not one of the biggest
corporations in the United States; in 2006 it was only 94th in size
according to the list compiled by the business magazine Fortune,
calculated based on gross income.(4)

The corporate headquarters of Coca Cola spends $2.4 billion dollars each
year on advertising. [Blanding] Incredible as this amount seems, a fifth
of it, or $500 million U.S., is spent in Mexico. [Castro, part 8a]
Persistent and clever advertising transmits images of happiness and
amusement which become implanted in the conscious and subconscious minds
of children and youth and remain there throughout their lives. Although
only anecdotal, it is significant that, according to Brian Price,
ex-convict and for 11 years the cook charged with preparing the last
meals requested by prisoners on death row in a Texas penitentiary, in
three out of four cases the last meal includes Coca Cola. Price's
explanation about the sentimental value of the "last Coke" relates to
the image the company tries to create through its advertising: memories
of earlier times, when things were happier. Price commented, "it
provides a refuge, thinking of times when they were children or
adolescents, when they were walking on a date...sharing a Coca Cola with
their girlfriends...I believe it consoles them." [Thomas, video 5/5,
minute 5:35]

After the invention of Coca Cola in 1886, Mexico became one of the first
markets outside of the United States to be penetrated by the
corporation. Coke recorded its first sales in Mexico in 1897. Today the
Mexican corporation FEMSA (Fomento Econsmico Mexicano, S.A.B. de C.V.)
is the largest bottler of Coca Cola in Latin America and the second
largest in the world, surpassed only by a bottler in the United States.
It has operations in nine Latin American countries.(5) To the 187
million clients that FEMSA claims to have in Latin America, it sells 1.8
billion cases (24 bottles of eight ounces each) of Coca Cola each year;
two of every 10 bottles sold in the world. [Amirica Econsmica] Its
omnipresence is demonstrated by its 1.5 million points of sale in Latin
America.

With its consumption of 487 bottles of Coca Cola per person each year,
the highest in the world, Mexicans surpass by a wide margin the United
States, with its 436 bottles per person. Mexico consumes almost half
(46%) of all of the Coca Cola sold in Latin America, and seven of every
10 bottles of soft drinks sold in Mexico are Coca Cola.
(see photo "Diet of a Family at Morelos State", Peter Menzel:
www.ciepac.org/photos/images/dietamexicana.jpg).

Several theories try to explain Mexico's fondness for soft drinks, and
now too for bottled water.(6) One theory has to do with the country's
historical backwardness regarding public health, especially with respect
to the provision of safe drinking water. The distribution network for
water in the large urban centers is deficient and the water is often not
fit for human consumption. The Mexican Association of Studies for the
Defense of the Consumer says that the quality of potable water in this
country is so bad that it leads to the consumption of soft drinks, which
"constitutes the gravest distortion of our eating habits, resulting in
the intake of empty calories." [Castro, part 10a] Piped water is the
exception in rural areas and soft drinks often substitute for the
limited availability of water of poor quality. Besides, in rural areas
soft dringks are easier to find and cheaper to buy than a more
nutritional alternative, such as milk. In the country as a whole, 12
million people don't have access to piped water and 23 million don't
have sewer systems. [Bell, Enciso 2005-A] In Chiapas, less than half the
population has water in their homes; at least a third of the people in
the state suffer from illnesses, such as trachoma, that result from
inadequate systems of hygiene.

Second, in Mexico soft drinks, thanks to advertising, have become
embedded in the current social culture. They are invariably present at
celebrations of various important events in people's lives. In the
countryside, visitors to peasants' homes are often welcomed by the offer
of a soft drink. Moreover, Coca Cola, or a substitute such as Pepsi
Cola, must be included in certain social activities. For example, in the
state of Chiapas soft drinks are an integral part of many rites and
ceremonies of the indigenous population. Together with posh, a
traditional liquor manufactured locally, the consumption of Coca Cola or
Pepsi have been promoted, in some cases displacing consumption of the
former.

A third reason for the high level of consumption: soft drink
distributors impose quotas or goals on sales in the small stores that
carry their products. Distributors give owners of these rural stores
refrigerators, chairs, tables, and all sorts of gifts, in exchange for
purchasing a certain quantity of soft drinks per month. [Bell] And store
owners look for ways to force their clients to buy soft drinks, for
example by conditioning the sale of other products on their purchase. In
many places, the brand of soft drink sold depends less on the tastes of
the clientele and more on the agreements between the local headman and
the bottlers.

Another reason for the high level of consumption of soft drinks has to
do with those to whom advertising is directed. Children and young people
are the preferred targets of the soft drink companies, because they know
that when people are hooked as children, they remain consumers for their
entire lives. There is almost no place where children can escape the
presence of the companies' logos. For example, "each time a child shoots
a basketball into a basket, his mind registers the message "Drink a
Coke," which is painted on the backboard of the basketball hoop - and
basketball is the most widespread sport in the mountains of [Chiapas]."
[Bellinghausen 2005] The indigenous communities are so saturated with
advertising that a group of Mexican intellectuals in 2005 sent a letter
to then President Fox:

We want to know if the National Plan of Development bases the nutrition
of the people on the consumption of Coca Cola. This question, which may
at first seem extreme, is based on the aggressive and excessive
advertising of the drink and on the price at which it is sold in
indigenous communities in Chiapas - two pesos, as opposed to the five
pesos that it costs in stores elsewhere in Mexico. [Bellinghausen 2001]

Generally speaking, the protests around the world against the practices
of Coca Cola can be classified in three main categories: labor,
environment, and health. We will look in depth at each of these.

Our grateful thanks to Carol Pryor for the English translation.

Notes

    1. This essay was written at the request, and with the support, of
the Norwegian Committee in Solidarity with Latin America.
    2. For the purposes of this essay, we distinguish between business
(or company) and corporation, the latter being a business controlled by
numerous shareholders, with the issue of commercial stock, whose value
is determined by means of its offer and sale on a stock market. The
words business and company are used here in a more generic sense.
    3. A corporation "tends to be more profitable to the extent that it
can make other people pay the bill for its impact on society. There is a
terrible word that economists use for this: externalities." [Bakan, 70]
    4. Coca Cola reported income in 2006 of a little more than 24
billion dollars, with profits that exceeded 5 billion dollars. For
purposes of comparison, the company that occupies first place, in the
United States and in the world, is Wal-Mart, which has income of 351
billion dollars and reported profits of 11 billion dollars. At a global
level, Coca Cola occupies the 285th position.
    5. Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico,
Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela.
    6. Mexico is the second largest consumer of bottled water per
capita, behind only Italy.
_______________________________________________
Ciepac-i mailing list
Ciepac-i@lists.laneta.apc.org
https://lists.laneta.apc.org/lists/listinfo/ciepac-i