Definition of "free enterprise" [free enterprise]

• The freedom of private businesses to operate competitively for profit with minimal government regulation. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned merely with profit but also with promoting desirable social ends; that business has a social conscience and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution, and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers."
• "We wrote out what was essentially an innocuous declaration of principles ending with a phrase in which HICCASP’s executive board reaffirmed its “belief in free enterprise and the Democratic system and repudiates Communism as desirable for the United States.”"