White Collar by C. Wright Mills — Read

Political consciousness is most immediately determined by politically available means and symbols. It is the political sphere itself, its institutions and traditions, its rhetoric and practices, its place in a total social structure, that must, after all, be in the forefront of an explanation of political indifference. For these are what political consciousness is about. In fact, all other factors in the mass media and the historic social structure play into the political sphere and there interact as a complex of causes.

Economic rather than political institutions have undoubtedly been of greater importance to life endeavor in the United States. Politics, in fact, has been widely understood as a means for gaining and protecting economic ends and practices. The whole laissez-faire tradition, so unevenly applied but so persistently asserted, has been the anchor and expression of this view. However inflated by rhetoric, ‘political fights' have been less over political principles than over economic and regional interests. This political order has given rise to the patronage machine, rather than the ideological party, to the trade union rather than the ‘worker's movement. ' Party contests have been contests between varied types and sizes of property, rather than between property and propertylessness, and unions have taken their place within and alongside the dominant parties, rather than in opposition to them.