This is a good question, but I tend to concur with Nathan (except I like Cockburn a LOT more than West). I don't understand the hostility West incites; maybe it's an age thing - I believe Nathan and I are both in our twenties.
As far as his socialist views go, the following is from Jacob Weisberg's piece on West which I posted in November: "He has said many things that I wouldn't try to defend, and that I doubt Bill Bradley would want to defend either, such as his formulaic, p.c. denunciations of American "imperialism." Where he tries to lay out a policy agenda, as in his recent book _The Future of American Progressivism_ (co-written with Roberto Mangabeira Unger), I think he oscillates between dreary, conventional ideas (public financing of campaigns, class-based rather race-based affirmative action, a consumption tax) and utterly impractical ones (a modified parliamentary system, explicit economic redistribution, mandatory voting). I'd be alarmed if West were drafting Bradley's policy positions."
Reed is right to criticize West's "pathology of the underclass" discourse, among other things, and Katha Pollitt has written insightfully on his family values rhetoric. He isn't that radical, but just the other day I saw him on Charlie Rose where he tossed out some good numbers on the inequality in this country and the fundamental maldistribution of wealth, not something you hear on TV that often.
I also remember Jon Wiener writing a piece in The Nation defending West against the loathsome Wieseltier.
Peter K.