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The purpose of this article is to show the central role of Thomas Hobbes in the formation of capitalist ideology. He is the first author to present the ideology of the businessman (homo oeconomicus), with its most distinctive characteristic, individualism. Every constitutive element of the capitalist system is found in Hobbes’ writings. His mentality is bourgeois and he uses a model that can only correspond to a mercantile society of capitalist character, in which political rights are less important than security in the market. The economic liberalism of Adam Smith inherits from Hobbes its individualistic basis and its chrematistic platform.

This paper presents and discusses the rent‐seeking process that occurred during Franco's regime in Spain (1939‐1975). Once the Civil War (1936‐1939) was over, those who won the war (militiaman, right‐wing factions) took control of the key positions in the new government. That meant the transfer of rents from the budget to veterans of war and their relatives, fuelled by the creation of an increasingly strong and well‐organised interest group. The author takes a public‐choice approach and is inspired by a similar study by R. Holcombe on the American Civil War.

The reader of Alfred Marshall writings confronts a variety of businessmen portraits that coexist along his epoch. The purpose of this paper is to describe Marshall's understanding of the capitalist‐owner concept, the way in which access to capital determined the emerging role played by entrepreneurs, the differences between entrepreneurs and managers in order to expose the characteristics that defined managerial activities.

A chronological review of Marshall writings revealed that the evolution of his ideas about entrepreneurship is associated to the role played by businessmen as capital owner, risk bearer, innovator, or administrator.

Marshall's analysis is useful to explain: the problem that arises in the firm when property (capital owner) and control (manager) are separated (the principal‐agent relationship); why directors of today's firms are required to embody qualities as administrators (passive superintendents) and innovators (active entrepreneurs); and how to sort out the conflict that occurs in many family firms when the founder (entrepreneur) is unable to cope with the managerial complexities associated to growth (the Marshallian “cycle life” of business and entrepreneurs).

Schumpeter is widely regarded in the economic literature as the one that developed the modern vision of businessmen as a risk bearer. We contend that this vision was already described by Marshall, as well as the distinction between the innovator (entrepreneur) and the orderly administrator of business (manager).