More accurately, Capitalism is an ownership model. People like to retcon all forms of market-based commerce as a kind of "proto-capitalism", but that makes it hard to talk about Capitalism as a distinct economic system. The main defining feature of capital markets is their use of private property as a tool for extracting profit from a market system. There are useful and socially positive applications for capital, but Capitalism places profit above all other concerns because extracting profit is its function. Capitalism was born in feudal Europe, and grew up during the colonial period and is, factually, only 500 years old or so at most. Markets have existed all over the world for literal thousands of years. Capitalism tries really hard to pretend like they invented something, but there's far more choice and affordability in the free markets around the world than anything that has been enclosed by the american financial system.

Then again, I don't subscribe to the notion of capitalist realism. Aside from the exported violence used to impose and sustain it, the model is flimsy and constantly in crisis.