In feudalism people owned businesses, created stuff, earned money, and made profit. In slavery the master got all those choices and made profits. What you describe is plain old fashion market economics. What makes Capitalism special is that we allow people to use their money to make more money. We allow those with capital to buy stocks and make money off of simply spending their capital. We allow people to loan out their capital to make more money. We allow people to own huge corporations while doing absolutely no work in that corporation and keep all the profits of all their workers.
In socialist countries, many people own their own businesses, decide their own work and take home their own money AND make profits. That is Plain old fashion business and markets. That has been around since man first traded.
If you own your business, make your own money, decide your own career, or Not has little to do with what IS capitalism. Pure and simple: Capitalism is using money, or capital to make more money or capital. It gives the most benefit to those with the most capitol.
You seem to have mixed up private ownership as part of capitalism. True the Soviet Union and Old Chinese Communism did have government control of the means of production. But ownership alone is NOT the defining characteristic of capitalism. In the old Soviet Union, farmers still owned their farms and workers still decided what to do for a living.
Marx did advocate for the means of production to be owned by the workers. If that happens in the majority of businesses then you could say they were no longer capitalist. Old fashion socialist and communist thought that if the government owned the means of production and the people controlled the government, then the people would vote out the crooks and prevent them from acquiring and consolidating all the wealth. But it seems owning the means of production and keeping all that wealth and profit is very corrupting. So both those countries turned into totalitarian regimes ruled by one party.
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