I second this. I work at a small flat fairly flat company (owner -> experienced programmers -> inexperienced programmers) and it doesn't feel like there's any politics at all. People separate into their project teams obviously, since you talk to them more, and dealing with large clients has a lot of annoying bureaucracy on their end, but otherwise it works fine.

Another thing to get rid of politics is to make it that there's nothing to be political about. "Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions on who gets what" or "social relations involving authority or power" [wikipedia]. If you have things to decide about, authority to hand out, your going to get politics! Politics is also a bit about gaming the system. Don't have a system to game!

People will start getting political when they start running into frustrations (or see opportunities) where politics will benefit them or their team in some way. Also making everyone feel like they're on the same 'team' can also help with getting rid of politics, although you have to have a small company to do that.