‘The stupid party': Intellectual repute as a category of ideological analysis

This article contends that the notion that some ideologies, usually on the left, are inherently more sophisticated than others has run through the politics of the Anglo-Saxon world over the past two centuries. The famous insult ‘the stupid party', almost without exception applied to conservatives, points to the opposing archetypes of the stupid backwoods conservative and the sophisticated metropolitan progressive. In allusion to Veblen's concept of repute, the persistent attribution of intelligence and sophistication to some ideologies, and their denial to others, is named ‘intellectual repute'. The article concludes by speculating that notions of intellectual respectability point to the influence of classes which base their self-image and their claims to class power on claims to superior intelligence: repute is, following Veblen, an artefact of class. The phenomenon of intellectual repute therefore speaks of the influence and class character of the intelligentsia.