ABSTRACT
Market capitalist economies developed historically in three different contexts: i) gradual transformation of traditional economies; ii) dismantling of war economy schemes; and iii) failure of attempts to consolidate socialist centrally planned economies. The first path to capitalism has been the topic of extensive discussion by the founding fathers of economic science and by economic historians. In the second section of this chapter we survey the main theoretical approaches to this issue. The other two paths to capitalism remained hitherto, for the most part, unexplored theoretically. In the third section of this chapter we survey the main factual analysis and theoretical insights already presented about these processes. As a conclusion, we argue that a comparison of the three paths to capitalism must become the main agenda for research of those interested in studying the emergence of market capitalist economies, providing a sound basis to deepen theoretical frames for those transition processes.
