It might be helpful to think of "free market" as a scale instead of an absolute definition. Level one free market: socialism, where people were still using money from a salary to buy everyday goods from people-owned "enterprises". Level ten free market: you buy protection at market rates or someone takes away your sandwich, if the protection takes the sandwich don't buy from the same vendor again.

I imagine discussing relative merits within the range of roughly level four to level eight would be far more fruitful than the usual "my free market is tougher than your free market" posturing.