Focusing on four individuals, Canadian Marxists and the Search for a Third Way describes the lives and ideas of Ernest Winch, Bill Pritchard, Bob Russell, and Arthur Mould and examines their efforts to put their ideas into practice. Campbell begins by looking at their childhoods in Great Britain, particularly their religious upbringing. He considers their family life, their attitudes toward women and ethnic minorities, what they were reading, and what effect that reading had on their theory and practice. He describes their lives as labor leaders and advocates of socialism, revealing how tenaciously, in an increasingly hierarchical, bureaucratized, and state-driven capitalist society, they held to the idea that socialism must be created by the working class itself.

This is a unique look at four Canadian Marxists and their struggle to create an educated, disciplined, democratic, mass-based movement for revolutionary change.

Peter Campbell is an adjunct professor in the Department of History at Queen's University and the author of Canadian Marxists and the Search for a Third Way.

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"Campbell's analysis of [Winch's, Russell's, Mould's, and Pritchard's] pre-labour revolt [has] roots in Victorian and Edwardian England and Scotland and his detailed study of their subsequent careers in the Canada of the 1920s-60s is particularly valuable ... Campbell's is the first sustained analysis and contains considerable new evidence." Greg Kealey, Dean of Graduate Studies, University Research Professor. Memorial University.
"an interesting and important book ... [Campbell] puts forward a well-considered argument that will shape the future of the history of Canadian social thought and radical movement ... [he] reviews Marxism of the Third Way in the light of different contemporary social thinkers and engagingly deals with their strengths and shortcomings in a thoughtful and thought provoking manner." James Naylor, Department of History, Brandon University.