Reddit mentions of Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World's Best Writers

Yes, it probably had to do with the institutionalizing and conservatizing affect of the universities and corporatization of publishing. There's also the rightward swing of politics. It was easy for liberals to like a socialist like Orwell because he criticized Stalinism, but there is nothing to gain by making nice with socialists anymore, no USSR to fight, so socialists are dumped from the mainstream.

However, there are plenty of socialist writers today. Just a few I'm very familiar with:

• Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba and Flamethrower
  
• Francis Spufford - Red Plenty
  
• China Mieville - The City and The City
  
  Here's a great excerpt from NYT's profile of Kushner.
  
  >It’s the same speed and the same record achieved by Ms. Kushner’s narrator, Reno. But Reno’s fascination with speed is part of an even more treacherous project: moving to New York City to become an artist at a time when the downtown scene is both male-dominated and plugged into a revolutionary impulse, with protest shading into violence.
  
  >Painting is dead, Minimalism is on the decline, and artists are ransacking their own bodies and lives for ideas and gestures that might make an impact. At 23, Reno, trying to capture “the experience of speed” by photographing her motorcycle’s tracks on the salt flats, becomes the girlfriend of an older Italian Minimalist, the scion of a tire and motorcycle company called Moto Valera. With him, she can attend chic events like a dinner party where she realizes that despite her hostess’s “feminist claims and enlightened look,” women are expected to help in the kitchen.
  
  I must admit among that list I've only read The City and The City. The hardboiled, incessantly-swearing anti-hero's story was not to my liking, but I've never read a novel like that before and loads of other people, including socialists I know of love that novel. I have Red Plenty on my bookshelf and I've plan on reading it soon. I only recently found out about Kushner but that profile on her makes me excited to read her.
  
  This it not what you asked about, but is relevant: Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World's Best Writers.
  
  >When news broke that the CIA had colluded with literary magazines to produce cultural propaganda throughout the Cold War, a debate began that has never been resolved. The story continues to unfold, with the reputations of some of America’s best-loved literary figures—including Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton, and Richard Wright—tarnished as their work for the intelligence agency has come to light.
  
  >Finks is a tale of two CIAs, and how they blurred the line between propaganda and literature. One CIA created literary magazines that promoted American and European writers and cultural freedom, while the other toppled governments, using assassination and censorship as political tools. Defenders of the “cultural” CIA argue that it should have been lauded for boosting interest in the arts and freedom of thought, but the two CIAs had the same undercover goals, and shared many of the same methods: deception, subterfuge and intimidation.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1565846648/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_66BUBbZ0BMEA8

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1944869131/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_M7BUBbCMGEF5J

FYI the author of the article got the title wrong:

Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World's Best Writers https://www.amazon.com/dp/1944869131/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_CICNybHMNDBSW