The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors; everything depends on the money.
Think about the way most companies currently hire. You post a job and then get blind resumes in response. This should be a social experience.
There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.

