Did Adam Smith differentiate between free market economies in general and capitalism in particular? It seems to me that much of his work is about the former rather than the latter,taking capitalism as the only instance.<p>A quote from Wikipedia[1]: &quot;Smith defined &quot;capital&quot; as stock, and &quot;profit&quot; as the just expectation of retaining the revenue from improvements made to that stock. Smith also viewed capital improvement as being the proper central aim of the economic and political system&quot;<p>So, in capitalism this is implemented as private property. (A perpetual, transferable, exclusive right to some resource)
If we f.ex. changed the implementation from perpetual to time limited non-transferable, we could do so in a manner that would retain the expectation of retaining just enough revenue from improvements.<p>Would this still be capitalism?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;History_of_capitalist_theory" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;History_of_capitalist_theory</a>
 (The actual source was a broken link)