The problem is that everybody is having strong opinions about capitalism without even considering that it is not a "thing" but a category based on its definition, and there are multiple definitions of it.

The anti-capitalist, Marxist definition largely rests on private property (somehow) meaning you own more stuff you work with. Other people don't own the stuff they need to work with, so they need to "sell out" and become your employees. A typically capitalist company for a Marxist would be one guy owning 100 taxicabs and hiring 100 (or rather 300, in 3 shifts) drivers. Here the drivers, not having money to buy their own taxi cabs, must rent themselves out as employees. This is partially exploitative. Often Marxists propose it is not coming from free-market outcomes, but often it is more like some folks rob people with violence e.g. rob natives of their land then hire them when they have no other way of making a living. Another important aspect of a Marxist theory is alienation. The way I understand it, if the driver owns his taxi cab, he uses his own value system to work. Sometimes he is driven by the profit motive. Sometimes he gives rides to friends for free. When he is an employee, he runs the value system of the employer. This is IMHO what is understood as alienation.

I don't need to explain, hopefully, that pro-capitalist libertarians understand it completely differently. It is not about the size of your property, but a general legal framework for propertarian, exhcange-based relations.

The "wonderful part" is that there are setups that are capitalist for Marxists, but socialist for libertarians: such as Soviet type state capitalism. (Lenin was open about it, he said they must do state capitalism before they can go to socialism.) There are also setups that are non-capitalist for Marxists but capitalist for libertarians: such as homesteader farms, each working on his own, not employing employees.

Try to get this conundrum. Everybody thinks they know what capitalism is. They actually only know what their side of the debate defines as capitalism. One side defines it as a GENERAL propertarian legal framework, and the other side as a SPECIFIC setup where some own productive resource, some not, and the first employ the rest.

This is why it is such a huge mind-killer for about 150 years now. It is worse than is-Pluto-a-planet, it is more like are-planets-bad, without even knowing what we understand under planets.

It is really crappy if you think about it, how people can misunderstand each other. The worst part is this. People on the Marxist side tend to think libertarian, propertarian legal frameworks (so the other sides definition of capitalism) slide towards huge corporations and widespread employment (instead of working on your own gig) , they consistently tend to ignore the surprising survivability of self-employment and small business. If we would take Marx seriously, the small business owner petite bourgeoisie should have disappeared by 1900 or so. Instead, it still thrives. They think all private property tends towards this type of concentrated, corporate, exploitative type. On the other hand, libertarians have a tendency to ignore employment and the proletariat at that. Libertarian economics textbooks explain the basic theory on how the shoemaker barters shoes with the baker. The problem is the term "baker", is it someone who bakes, or someone who owns a bakery? To libertarians the distance between these two are small. They tend to ignore that such a thing as working class exists, with people who never break out from working for others for generations on and on.

So both sides tend to ignore phenomena that fits in the other sides definition. Marxists ignore self-employment and startups, libertarians ignore the perpetual working class who will never open as startup and depend on others for giving them jobs.

For information, there is a bunch of people called Distribustists who understand both sides. They may be wrong - they are very much a bunch of romantic Catholics - but at least understand both sides, while the sides themselves tend to talk past each other. Here is a decent series, third and fourth article. Again the point is not whether this is right, but the point is to show how both sides misunderstand each other, and these guys understand both sides. They get it property and market transactions are very important - but they also get that when lots of people (proletarians) have no productive property, their negotiation position will be low. They seem to be mostly following Adam Smith here.