Principalities & Powers

sive corporations, government, and culturalrninstitutions in education and thernmass media swallowed this independentrnmiddle class and converted it into therndependent, passive, well-fed, and wellentertainedrnmiddle-income proletariatrnof the 1950's. The major cultural themernof that decade was the new dependencernof Middle American life on the structuresrnand mechanisms of the mass organizationsrnand . . .