not to be that guy but the money changers that Yeshua drove from the 2nd temple in Jerusalem aren’t quite capitalists in the modern sense of the word, just like the Early Christians aren’t Communists in the modern sense of the word. The money changers were exploiters, but the way they exploit people is different. They don’t exploit through surplus value (unpaid labor) but through usury and currency exchange rates. Marx/Engels talk about the pre-capitalist forms of capital in all 3 volumes of Capital, which were

• merchant’s capital (buying commodities at a low price in one place and selling them at a high price in another), i.e. taking advantage of the way price fluctuates above and below value (equilibrium) due to supply/demand
• usurer’s capital (i.e. charging interest on loans)

What makes capitalism unique is industrial capital which profits off of surplus labor, specifically socialized labor, in an industrial setting. What makes the proletariat proletarian is that they have nothing to sell but their labor power, and they don’t own (enough) means of production to secure subsistence on their own through their own labor (as a sole proprietor or peasant farmer or petit bourgeois might). The enclosure of the commons and the industrialization of society turns most people into proletarians, allowing industrial capital to become the primary form of capital, which ushers in the era of capitalism. Part of what gets a lot of critics of Marxism confused is that they think Capitalists and Capitalism have always existed, and is therefore “natural”. It’s not! It’s unique to industrial and post-industrial society. There are pre-capitalist forms of capital, but capitalism is the predominance of industrial capital, not merchant’s capital or usurer’s capital.