I guess maybe the problem is that we have different concepts of what it means to be radical, or else I was not clear enough to start off with. I am a Marxist and have been so since 1967. The Nation has attracted many independent Marxist readers in the past 20 years or so as the sectarian Marxist left imploded. With all due respect to Patricia Williams and Katha P., they are not really as radical as they might seem to you. Neither are the bobsey twins, Cockburn and Hitchens for that matter.
Although it had occurred to me to suggest some writers who would appeal to people like myself, it subsequently seemed like a waste of time. In any case, here goes:
--Dan Georgakas --Paul Buhle --Alan Wald --James Petras --Tariq Ali --George Lipsitz --David Roediger --Scott McLemee (much sharper than Alterman) --Kevin Kelley --Lucy Lippard --Norman Finkelstein
I suspect that if you took a survey of your readership, you would find many more Marxists than you would have anticipated. You simply can not take us for granted. The Democratic Party does this with blacks, Latinos, gays and women. Marxism is a different sort of thing. It is a deeply rooted set of ideas that takes enormous will-power to uphold in a society like this. It is actually a tribute to the kind of magazine that the Nation was in the past that so many of us were loyal to it.
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)