you might like this essay which has a similar thesis

Capitalism sucks for workers. It’s common to see the obvious failures of our current system as new horrors, and to conclude that we need to return to some time when things were better. Maybe the “better time” is vague — just a general hand-waving and an exhortation to make things great again. Or maybe it’s explicit, with policy nods towards, for example, Roosevelt’s New Deal. Either way, this better time was probably some period after the workday was reduced to only 8 hours but before neoliberalism really kicked off. Not coincidentally, this time period lines up with the existence of the U.S.S.R. (1917-1991). Workers’ lives improved when the West felt threatened by the rise of communism!

To protect their own interests against the growing enthusiasm for communism, the capitalist class of the West permitted the passing of worker-friendly social policies. Here, I’m going to walk through a few examples of these policies that were motivated by fear of the U.S.S.R. and its influence in the world. I want to show how these were strategic concessions by the capitalist class rather than the result of the establishment coming to see reason or bowing to the force of the better argument. I will build this argument by citing contemporary capitalists, mainstream news outlets and government officials, demonstrating how these policies were explicitly linked at the time to fears of communist organizing inspired by the U.S.S.R. I will also highlight how these policies softened the hard edge of capitalism to quell the rising interest in socialism, while still entrenching liberal, pro-capitalist principles.

continues at https://redsails.org/concessions/