The twentieth century left us with two extreme cases that we should avoid in the future: a market society whose inequality was justified by an appeal for individual freedom, on the one hand, and the subordination of economy to a political will whose egalitarianism was a mask for coercion, on the other hand. Our task is to find new ways of guaranteeing a plural economy within a framework of democracy. Mauss and Polanyi agreed on the need for practical syntheses of old and new realities rather than radical reversals based on a false realism. Instead of making an abstract appeal for an alternative economy, we should be devising fresh combinations within the field of economic possibilities open to us.