Fascism is really more of a political designation than an economic one.
Captialism, Socialism, and Communism are economic systems, regardless of the political structure by which the government is established. In simplest terms, the distinctions between the economic systems are as follows:
In Capitalism: Ownership of economic resources (land, labor, capital, entrepreneurship) is private. Production decisions are made by the owners of the resources.
In Socialism: There is some private ownership of property and economic resources - especially land, but the government controls industry. Government directs production decisions. Capital is owned by the government. Prices are typically set by the government.
In Communism: There is no private property. Land and capital are all owned by the government and distributed according to the ruling party whims. All production decisions and pricing levels are directed by the government.
It’s a tricky situation because it appears that the definitions have been arrived at by people not applying a reasonable analytic standard. Fascism appears to be just any kind of government so long as it is “led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.” citation: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fascism
This appears to me awfully situational. Is not a king a ‘dictator having complete power’? So what is the difference between a fascist dictatorship and a monarchy? Were there not many racist monarchies? Yes, there were. What the definition to me defines is not fascism in general but NAZISM in particular which is not even the most common form of fascism observed in the mid-20th century. Perhaps others notice considerable racism in fascist Italy, but I have not heard of much. The Jews in Italy weren’t persecuted in any meaningful way until the Nazis took control of the country upon Mussolini’s fall. That was when Pius XII moved to protect them, and not before.
This tendency to identify fascism with Nazism is, to me, harmful to eonomic analysis because, as your definition notes, anything having at least some governmental intereference counts as socialism. That utterly denatures the concept as an analytic tool. Is it socialist to insist on everyone driving on the same side of the road? How about safe work standards? How about taxes being collected from the states for highways that are preferentially built only in certain ones?
It’s probably a useless effort on my part but I really do prefer to state capitalism as you have stated it, but make what you call socialism fascism and what you call communism socialism. To me, it is not fascism that is the political term but communism, because you don’t need to have any particular governmental structure to achieve fascist ends. You do need to have the dictatorship of the proletariat to have communism, no matter to what economic purpose you turn the resulting governmental structure.
After all, China is ‘communist’, but its economy is becoming increasingly capitalist, due to easing of laws against private ownership of the means of production. There remain no free elections, however, and the nomenklatura nominate from among themselves who will succeed to positions of power (always in the interest of the proletariat, of course).
I agree that there is no particular ‘socialist’ form of government. You have democracy, oligarchy or monarchy, and that’s it. If the monarch has no breeding, I guess that’s when the intellectuals say that ruler is a fascist. Sounds like class distinction, rather than cogent political analysis, though.