Well, without necessarily entering into a long debate about the ins and outs of fascism, etc.., here's one of those Wikipedia links that delves into the origins of Fascism ....
en.wikipedia.org
And here's an extract where the "highlights" are my own....
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Italian Fascism promoted a corporatist economic system whereby employer and employee syndicates are linked together in associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy.[3] This economic system intended to resolve class conflict through collaboration between the classes.[4]
Italian Fascism opposed liberalism, but rather than seeking a reactionary restoration of the pre-French Revolutionary world, which it considered to have been flawed, it had a forward-looking direction.[5] It was opposed to Marxist socialism because of its typical opposition to nationalism,[6] but was also opposed to the reactionary conservatism developed by Joseph de Maistre.[7] It believed the success of Italian nationalism required respect for tradition and a clear sense of a shared past among the Italian people, alongside a commitment to a modernized Italy.
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Here we have something on the political outlook of Benito .... it seems he was an avowed Socialist with some "aberrations" in that regard, and was opposed to Marxist, i.e. Communistic, Socialism. I didn't come across anything regarding Communist. Maybe, in those early days, aspects of Communism and Socialism could have got a bit "blurred" !!
en.wikipedia.org
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In February 1909,[27] Mussolini once again left Italy, this time to take the job as the secretary of the labor party in the Italian-speaking city of Trento, which at the time was part of Austria-Hungary. He also did office work for the local Socialist Party, and edited its newspaper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore (The Future of the Worker).
By now, he was one of Italy's most prominent socialists. In September 1911, Mussolini participated in a riot, led by socialists, against the Italian war in Libya. He bitterly denounced Italy's "imperialist war", an action that earned him a five-month jail term.[32] After his release he helped expel from the Socialist Party two "revisionists" who had supported the war, Ivanoe Bonomi, and Leonida Bissolati. As a result, he was rewarded the editorship of the Socialist Party newspaper Avanti! Under his leadership, its circulation soon rose from 20,000 to 100,000.
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