I wouldn't consider Fascism to have been anti-capitalist in any meaningful sense. Regardless of my opinion on the matter though, I would argue that there is a general consensus that Fascism wasn't anti-Capitalist in the absolute sense you seem to be implying, which is to say as an analogue to Socialism – and, specifically, for the sake of a proper comparison and in agreement with your question, with 1920s Italian Socialism in its mainstream anti-capitalist formulation, which is to say the maximalist majority fraction which identified with the program of the III Internationale and therefore pursued the actual socialization of production means, proletariat dictatorship and integral land reform.

If we observe these two phenomenons in their historical context and in their relations with each other, telling them apart becomes rather easy, as anti-capitalism was definitely one of Socialism's core tenets, while conversely anti-Socialism – and, specifically, the absolute opposition to the maximalist current of the “Italian Bolsheviks”, as Mussolini's Popolo d'Italia routinely referred to the PSI – was one of the central elements which provided the rising Fascist movement with a political identity and with a platform able to appeal to those social groups and fractions which identified more or less closely with national ideas and with a “platform of order”.

This includes, in what would later be recalled by Giovanni Gentile as a “battle of symbols”, the presence of clear identifiers: black shirts and red shirts; on one side the national flag, the Italian Tricolore, on the other the red flag of the Russian revolution; on one side the Fascio, the bundle of rods with the ax facing outwards, on the other the sickle and hammer. And within each town, buildings, monuments and places to defend or conquer.

Citizens – called the reformed Fascio of Bologna, a few days after the violent clash at the City Hall – the red maximalists, vanquished and scattered, are calling for help from the peasant masses to try and strike back, with the intention of raising their tatter over the city hall. We will never suffer such indignity! An infamy for every Italian citizen and for our Motherland who wants nothing of Lenin and Bolshevism. This Sunday, women and all those who want peace should stay at home, and if they want to do something good for their country, they can display the Italian Tricolore from their windows. In the streets of Bologna, this Sunday, only Fascists and Bolsheviks. Let it be our fight! Our great fight in the name of Italy!

Now, the fact that Fascism was, openly, manifestly and vocally anti-Socialist – or anti-Bolshevik, which was a subtlety often lost to average contemporary observers – doesn't mean necessarily that it had to be just as openly, manifestly and vocally pro-capitalist. Indeed, one of Mussolini's recurrent point was the idea – instrumental as it may appear, but certainly somewhat effective and not entirely disingenuous – that Fascism was indeed against “Bolshevism”, against “the people of the membership card”, the “PUS”, the “Socialist Direction”, the “nation haters”, the “defeatists”, the “deserters of Caporetto”. But “not against the workers”. That, indeed Fascism advocated for and supported, if possible by legal ordinary means, a development of the production forces of the nation, threatened by the insanity of a Bolshevik revolution.

Conversely, the dubious legality of the means employed by Fascists in their anti-Bolshevik “resistance” wasn't really lost on most observers – it did manage to appear often an excess, a manifestation of genuine national sentiment which crossed the line into violence here and there but which could nonetheless earn the tolerance of the authorities due to its character of “order movement” and due to its role in containing the socialist threat.

According to the General Inspector of Lucca (December 1920), Fascism was a phenomenon

rooted in the sentiment of reaction to the violence and overbearance used so far by socialist extremists. Fascists regard themselves as the defenders of freedom and right and seem to produce within the nation the impression that they support the Government in restoring […] law and order which have been trumped by Communists.

There are countless examples of the explicit, deliberate and complete opposition between Fascism and Socialism – at least in its maximalist current, which is to say, the Socialist Party itself – so that mistaking the two is really a matter of completely disregarding their respective history and relations.

As for Fascism's relations to capitalism, one can't find such an unambiguous pattern. Which should not really surprise, since, in historical context, it's quite uncommon to find such a blatant conflict as the one between the Italian maximalist socialists and Fascism. Relations between Fascism – which, soon enough, meant the Italian Government – and Capital fall under the more composite character of relations between the State, its ideologies, and productive forces, with their own ideologies, sometimes in agreement, and others in conflict.

The fact is, while we can safely concur that the Italian Socialist Party was – at least from late 1918 until the early 1920s – dominated by an anti-capitalist current, it is much more difficult to define anti-capitalism as a general idea. In other words, how do we establish what's anti-capitalism and, especially, what's anti-capitalism within the Italian social, political and economical world of the 1920s?

In mid 1919, denouncing he obscure financial relations of new Prime Minister F.S. Nitti – a man both known for his dirigist tendency and for his productivism, as well as personally tied to the leading steelworks Ansaldo - industrialist and future heavy industry manager of ILVA Oscar Sinigaglia, accused the former Minister of the Treasury of being an expression of “high end Bolshevism”, which is to say, of the aforementioned influences of certain great financiers. Now, those great financiers could have been either the fervently nationalist Italian Perrone Brothers or the foreign American and British capital groups behind the Cunard Line or operating on behalf of the Morgan Bank.

The hint is what you would regard as an “anti-capitalist innuendo”; one of those hints at some unspecified interest of the “corporations” - in common parlance – which are commonplace in political discourse, but are in the end just that: political discourse. Sinigaglia wasn't anti-capitalist because of his role in the IRI, nor was J.P. Morgan jr. a Bolshevik because someone might have regarded his dealings with the state as compromising for the ideal integrity of the free market. Nor was Mussolini anti-capitalist for his inclination towards productivism and for his willingness to bend certain rules of “abstract liberalism” in order to achieve his political ends.

After all, to subordinate economical considerations to certain political interests or to the needs of the state (the nation) would not be uncharacteristic for an Italian statesman. And, while one can argue over the extent, the practical impact, and the convenience of the economical practices of Fascism, they do not answer to a fundamental anti-capitalist calling; rather, they often appear to continue and pursue the same methods which the Italian economical system had been forced to adopt since before its national unification.

This may be one point that is somewhat lost for those who have become accustomed to the American “exceptionalism” to the point of regarding it as ordinary. A comparison to the US – pointless and obvious as it may be – show that Italy was (and her national and financial leadership was well aware of the issue) comparatively overpopulated, lacking an internal market to develop (exploit), and desperately poor in so far as natural resources. Italy had no robber barons to contend with in the years of its industrial development, because – simply put – no one was in such a position to profit from steel, oil or railroads without the original initiative or some degree of control from the government. It had been the Piedmontese Government of Cavour to use state debt to fund early railroad works, his ties to France to support the great tunnel works across the Alps. It had been the Chief Engineer of the Navy, Adm. Benedetto Brin, to oversee the early plans to establish a steelworks facility in Terni, since steel production was strategic yet expensive and in need of both state assistance and incentives.

Not everyone agreed on these policies of course: an entire school of liberal economists earned their ranks by challenging the protectionist excesses of the 1887 tariffs. And, while most of them agreed on the substantial superiority of the British model (of Manchester's school legacy), they usually had to come to terms with the concurrent needs of the Italian capitalist system, and with the practical observations of the leading capitalists themselves.

It was, if I remember correctly, Giovanni Agnelli who argued – with regards to his relations with the Fascist Regime – that one can't be an industrialist in Italy, without being close to the government. Perhaps he was complaining a bit; or maybe he was just stating a fact.

 

For a general overview of Fascism as a European phenomenon and its characters, see:

Paxton, R. - Anatomy of Fascism

Also, for other considerations:

Candeloro, G. - Storia dell'Italia Moderna

Feinstein, C.H. ; Temin, P. ; Toniolo, G. - L'economia europea tra le due guerre

Forsyth, D. - The Crisis of Liberal Italy

Marongiu, G. - La politica fiscale nell'Italia liberale e democratica (1861-1922)

Monticone, A. - Il fascismo al microfono

Vivarelli, R. - Il fallimento del liberalismo

Vivarelli, R. - Storia delle origini del Fascismo