The Philosophy of Coca Cola

Mr. George Fernandes, who as the Minister of Industries threw Coca Cola out of India in the late 1970s, has launched a new movement against the drink. He still seems unaware that the first principle of the philosophy of Coca Cola is that it is substitutable only by another cola. For once exposed to the world of cola, life in a community never remains the same; the spectrum of human needs in it expands permanently. Everything else about Coca Cola is negotiable, but not this. A cola can never be replaced by tea, coffee, beer, wine or water. That is why, in the global scene, Coca Cola's prototypical competitor is Pepsi Cola.

Some of my friends like to flaunt their autonomy from the cola culture. They do not drink colas; they even force their children to be abstemious. Proud of their dissent from mass culture, they talk of Coca Cola the same way others talk of McDonalds and Woolworth, or red meat, hard liquor and tobacco. Their attitude to the cola drinks is a mix of contempt (towards an aspect of 'low' culture and fear (of a caffeine-based drink 'injurious' to health).

Yet, the very fact that they have to flaunt such dissent and that their skepticism does not cover other items of useless consumption, tells us something. It tells us that Coca Cola is a worldview within which there is ample scope for diversity and dissent. Thus, when Fernandes banished Coca Cola from India, he thought he was being true to his socialism and the principle of self-reliance. Actually, he was being faithful to the philosophy of Coca Cola. For Coca Cola was duly substituted by Campa Cola, a native product, and Thumbs Up, launched by another multinational. And now, fifteen years afterwards, to spite the likes of Fernandes, Coca Cola has re-entered India triumphantly. It is even competing here with its global counter-player, Pepsi Cola, to provide the model of market competition that will supposedly be the salvation of Mother India.

It cannot be otherwise because Coca Cola is the ultimate symbol of the market. You can have orange juice, tea or beer without a global market. Theoretically, you can grow oranges or at least squeeze them at home. You can make your own tea or coffee or brew your own beer, if you have the patience. None of these is possible with Coca Cola. You have to have it in some ready-made form-you need a franchise to produce it and a global market to have access to it.
The secret formula of Coca Cola-closely guarded by the company and an object of greedy curiosity of its competitors-also constitutes a paradigmatic puzzle of our times. Some companies have come close to the formula, to judge by the tastes of their products. Others have deliberately chosen not to duplicate it; they seek a niche for themselves in the cola market not occupied by Coca Cola. But that only deepens the mystery-the code still waiting to be cracked, the standard yet to be approximated. Local or national differences do not affect the mystery, as shown by the failure of cola drinks with a touch of cinnamon and cardamom to cater to Indian taste. Nor does levels of economic activity and political preferences. Some isolated cultures may find Coca Cola strange, some economies may not be able to sustain its production or import, and the politicians may try to 'clean' a society of its cola-philes. But remove the external compulsions and the love for Coca Cola among the moderns returns in its pure form.

Air India, which woos its Indian passengers in competition with other airlines, has understood this perfectly well. Undaunted by slogans of self-reliance of its owner, the Government of India, the airlines has never encouraged Indian cola, not even during the heydays of bureaucratic socialism.
Coca Cola touches something deep in human existence. Like other elements of the global mass culture-pop music, denims and hamburgers-it reminds its consumer of the simple, innocent joys of living which the modern world has lost but which survive symbolically in selected artifacts of modernity. Hence both the difficulty of giving up Coca Cola and the fanaticism of those fighting it.

The philosophy of Coca Cola colours many areas of life and the votaries of the philosophy would like it to inform all areas of life. They do not have to work hard for that, because the philosophy is phagocytic; it eats up other adjacent philosophies or turns them into ornamental dissents within its universe.
One example is liberal-democratic politics. Gradually in the democracies, elections are getting depoliticised. They are increasingly media battles, with advertisement spots and droves of media experts and public relations consultants remote-controlling the battle from sidelines. The voters are given the choice between two images, both sold as alternatives to the other, while being usually the flip-sides of the other.

The candidates think the needs of the electorate are created by media experts. The experts believe that all candidates are edited versions of each other; only their public images differ. For both, the ultimate model of 'political' contests is the advertisement war among the colas, each representing unessential, artificially created needs. The aim is to ensure that the electorate, seen as mass of consumers, do not get a chance to stop and think before deciding their own fate. The philosophy of Coca Cola insists that you never question the rules of the game, that far worse than loosing is to opt out or admit that the game bores you.

The philosophy of Coca Cola is the archetypal social philosophy of our times. Those who talk glibly of the Coca Cola culture subverting other 'superior' cultures know nothing of its appeal. Coca Cola happily grants such superiority when the market or advertisement requires it, for its appeal is nothing less than an invitation to worsen it at its own game. Japan, which can be called the Pepsi Cola of the world economy, has shown that Coca Cola can be 'defeated' if one joins the game sincerely and retools one self to fight Coca Cola on its own terrain.
Academician Primakov, the Russian social scientist, seemed surprised in 1980s that in Dusseldorf, McDonalds employed more people than the steel industry and Coca Cola paid more tax than Krupps. He failed to appreciate that mass culture was not only sane politics, but also rational economics, that the defiance of mass culture was already the defiance of sanity and rationality. To have the luxury of that defiance, you have to take on not merely the world of mega-consumption but also the concepts of normality and rational knowledge.

Decades ago, when as a cultural innovation Coca Cola began its journey through the corridors of time, it allegedly included cocaine as an ingredient. If true, it shows how little the Coca Cola company understood its own product. The corporation, true to nineteenth-century capitalism, sold something addictive and injurious to health, to make the demand for its product artificially inelastic. It had no idea that it was a pioneer selling a worldview and a lifestyle, that even without an addictive ingredient, it had an addictive brew that could ensure as inelastic a demand as any bootlegger or drug peddler might want.
Mr Fernandes will not agree, but in the mass culture that has begun to engulf urban, media-exposed India, Coca Cola is already away of thinking rather than a thought.