That betrays a lack of understanding about leftism. Government control over the economy is one way, yes. But your two options aren't public dictator and private dictator.

Worker coops, syndicated unions (anarcho-syndicalism), anarcho-communism, gift economy...

Within the confines of the system you can also balance power quite a bit with UBI, mandated worker councils, worker representation on the company board of directors, etc.

As long as people are not allowed to fend for themselves because everything is privatized and commodified and you need to work for someone else to stay alive then you will not have freedom, a free market that retains that power dynamic just gives your employer even more ownership over you.

I still had this in my clipboard from an earlier comment:

"The son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master. He must sell his labour for a scant and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have toiled to drain this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine. They gave to the work the full measure of their strength, and what more could they give? But their heir comes into the world poorer than the lowest savage. If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on condition of surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter to the government and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon him by the State, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman, is always increasing; it rarely leaves him the power to improve his system of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work--though not always even that --only on condition that he yield a half or two-thirds of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of the machine.

We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger."

The Conquest of Bread