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Societies, whether traditional or modern, experience tension between spontaneity (individual freedom) and control (regulation). Consequently, economies as a subsystem of society experience it too. More specifically, they experience a tension between economic individualism and economic collectivism, which in modern economies revolves around the role of the state in the economy. Since the collapse of communism, this tension has manifested itself not as a tension between market communism and command socialism, but as a tension between the free market and the interventionist variants of market capitalism. Although economic and political liberalization is in evidence worldwide, not only in post-communist societies, its outcome remains uncertain. Liberal democracy in the sense of democratic politics and free-market economics has not triumphed hitherto, and also its future is far from assured. This work examines the tension between economic individualism and economic collectivism. It discusses in detail the four pure types of modern economic system: market capitalism; market socialism; command socialism; and command capitalism.