In Ideological Perspectives on Canada, Patricia Marchak builds on her earlier descriptions of Canadian reality - its liberalism and socialism - to argue that today's corporatism differs from its forerunners in both its values and its definition of society.

Marchak argues that liberalism and socialism have many commonalities, such as the goals of equality and freedom for citizens. Corporatism, however, is opposed to equality and promotes an authoritarian hierarchy, resembling the older conservative ideology. To support her argument, Marchak provides a general overview of the study of ideologies, analyzes liberalism and socialism in the context of Canada, and uses Marxist theory to explain past and present class structure and the emergence of a corporatist social structure. A valuable contribution to the debate about the society we live in, Ideological Perspectives on Canada attempts to look at ideologies from an objective standpoint, while admitting that analysts can never fully remove themselves from the web of their own society, which in the Canadian case is steeped in liberalism, socialism, and corporatism.