The United States combines formal political equality with concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Why, then, do the majority not use their votes to change this state of affairs? In this book, John C. Berg argues that the structure of the capitalist economy constrains progressive congressional action.

Asserting that neither pluralism nor institutionalism adequately explains congressional outcomes, he offers an alternative Marxist analysis that recognizes how political struggle exists within limits posed by the need to maintain capitalist prosperity.