The worldwide collapse of state socialism has created a new inevitability—the rise of free economic institutions. The question facing nations around the world is no longer whether to introduce or expand the practice of capitalism but only how to do it. While there is no blueprint for transforming a command economy into a free one, the experience of the United Kingdom since 1979 clearly shows one approach that works: privatization.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 1992 issue of Harvard Business Review.