If capitalism is the nail, private property is the hammer. Quite a lot of development that the United States wanted to see happen in the west (which enriched it immensely) was done because it was willing to make grants of private property to the companies (largely railroads) doing the development.

You can debate whether capitalism is (or should have been) the only method for getting things done, but the use of private property as a viable incentive for driving innovation within that system is not really debatable.