A man who borrows his brother’s canoe–his capital–to go trade downriver, and who comes back and shares his profits with his brother, is a Capitalist, and so is his brother.
An artist who works a second job to build up the money for supplies, paints, then sells them, is a Capitalist.
Socialism is an ideology. Marx, I suspect, is the one whose propaganda made it possible to claim Capitalism, an activity which men and women had engaged in since before recorded history, was an ideology.
Specifically, what they wanted to claim is that Capitalism inherently is something like what has been created in modern day China: an abusive oligarchic order in which a very few get very rich on the backs of the very poor many. In America, even in our worst days, we never had anything remotely as awful and morally wrong as what the Chinese have wrought in the name of “justice”. They killed far more of their own people than America ever enslaved in its entire history; and if we want to talk about slavery in China, lets just start with the iPhone factories. Let’s continue with a review of China’s history over the last 60 years, in which BILLIONS of people were treated with the same contempt for their innate dignity as characterized the worst slave drivers in the worst parts of America.
Capitalism is inherently liberating, since it is inherently that system which is precisely NOT oligarchic. No long term business monopolies have ever been recorded that were not supported directly by the government.
Here is a bon mot: economics frees; politics enslaves. I may decide I like that. Not sure.