The Social Credit party in Alberta has traditionally been presented as "petty bourgeois" in its ideology and appeals, reflecting what was believed to be the dominant class in the province at the time. Edward Bell challenges these widely held interpretations of the ideology, popular class basis, and behaviour in office of the early Social Credit movement (1932-40).

In this account of the Social Credit transformation, Alvin Finkel challenges earlier works which focus purely on Social Credit monetary fixations and religiosity.

This work approaches the phenomenon of guild socialism from a new perspective, focusing on the Douglas Social Credit movement. It explores the key ideas, gives an overview of the main theories and traces their subsequent history. Thoroughly researched, it provides original material relevant to the field of political economy. This early approach to non-equilibrium economics reveals the extent of the incompatibility between capitalist growth economics and social and environmental sustainability.