Say, rather, not implausibly, that the fear of Communism led western European elites after WWII to abandon the strategy of trying to cut wages and destroy unions for the strategy of being nicey-nicey and promising lots of wage and social welfare dividends from economic growth.
On the other hand, in other times and places the fear of Communism leads elites to round people up in soccer stadiums and shoot them.
Why the presence of a Communist bogeyman just over the border produces sometimes one and sometimes the other result has never been clear to me...
Brad Delong