Giovanni Gentile, who was one of Mussolini’s chief advisors and essentially his ghostwriter, is basically the founder of fascism, and he argues that it is not only a form of socialism, but its most viable form.
What fascism fundamentally does differently than pure socialism is that it leaves the running of industry etc in the hand of those more likely to have suitable skills rather than in the hands of political operators and other apparatchiks.
By definition that makes it more likely to survive as a system than the delusional true believers could manage.
But fascism is vile not for being the most moderate form of socialism but because it is a form of socialism in the first place.