it was more than just a discontent with liberalism, it was also discontent with communism -- an attempt to find a 3rd way / fuse them.
the ruthless capitalist approach led to the development of communism as a reaction. but communism had its own faults and, to many, egregious failures as well.
Mussolini -- who was literally the editor of a socialist newspaper -- grew disillusioned with socialism, and proposed a 3rd way by mixing chunks of capitalism that he liked with the chunks of communism that he liked, as well as a good healthy dose of machismo and nationalism to paper over the gaps.
similar approaches were taken in Germany, and there was a Nationalist (right wing) Workers Party (left wing) called the NSDAP that tried to do the same thing. Instead of pure corporatism they made it ethnic, but had vaguely similar approaches to corporations and the state, which often meant whatever they felt like at the time.