Le Carre, one can assume, was a closet Trotskyite. He hated the Stalinists, but loved the elements of social coercian found in the Soviet system.
I read fairly recently that Fleming was inspired to create the fictional James Bond in response to the treason by the Cambridge spies Burgess and Maclean and eventually Philby later on. The first novel Casino Royale has the Russian Reds as the enemy. The movies have long forgotten that the communists were the first enemy Bond faced. Commie sympathizers like Le Carre probably never did. The fascist tag is a default position by socialists to those who oppose them.