Between Guillotines and Guidelines
In 1789, the French Revolution sent tremors through the old world. The aristocracy was dethroned, the Church stripped of its sacred authority. Power, once ordained by birth or divine right, was seized by the people. The revolution was brutal, imperfect, but unmistakably aimed at hierarchy—at those who claimed to rule by virtue of blood or blessing.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the guillotine is long gone. But power has not disappeared. It has changed costumes.
The aristocrats now wear academic gowns. The clergy now speak in the sterile tongues of data, science, and policy. And the people—those same people who once rose up in Paris—are today told to sit down, shut up, and trust the experts.
We are ruled not by dukes, but by epidemiologists. Not by bishops, but by fact-checkers.
What was once God’s word is now “The Science.”
The new priesthood wears microphones instead of mitres.
And just like the old elites, these new rulers do not like being questioned.
Enter Alvin W. Gouldner, a sociologist who saw this coming decades ago. In The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class, he wrote of a cultural elite that lives by producing, interpreting, and managing knowledge. This “New Class” of intellectuals, he argued, was no less self-interested than the old aristocracy—they simply cloaked their power in moral language.
They were anti-bourgeois, but not anti-elite.
They championed the underdog, but despised the common man.
They claimed to serve the public, while insulating themselves in universities, foundations, and editorial boards.
And most of these intellectuals, Gouldner noted—and it remains true today—lean left. Not mildly, but overwhelmingly. It is no accident. In most Western universities, it is an unspoken rule that no conservative will chair the sociology department. Philosophy, literature, gender studies—same story. Perhaps economics remains the lone outlier, the last holdout of intellectual diversity. But the rest? Uniformity disguised as virtue.
Gouldner’s brilliance was this: he turned the sociological microscope back onto the sociologists. He saw that objectivity, neutrality, and rationality could all be masks for domination. The intellectual was not above power games—he was simply playing them at a different level.
Helmut Schelsky saw it too.
In his 1975 book Die Arbeit tun die anderen (Let Others Do the Work), he offered a sharp and prophetic critique of this same ruling class—the intellectual elite. But where Gouldner exposed the mechanics of their ascent, Schelsky warned of the deeper danger: a new priestly rule (Priesterherrschaft), cloaked not in cassocks but in jargon and moral posture.
Schelsky argued that this class produces no goods, performs no material labor, yet claims the right to define truth, distribute “healing,” and dictate public virtue. They do so not through violence, but through meaning—controlling what counts as legitimate speech, valid morality, and acceptable opinion.
Like the medieval clergy, they thrive by painting the present as intolerable, creating a demand for salvation—through ideology, education, or cultural guidance. The more helpless people feel, the more powerful the elite becomes. The currency is no longer bread or gold—but meaning itself.
Schelsky called this reprimitivization—a step backward from Enlightenment ideals of reason and individual autonomy. In this schema, work is demeaned, material life dismissed, and ordinary effort seen as vulgar. The intellectual class feeds on the labor it despises.
And through what Schelsky called Sprachherrschaft—a monopoly on politically sanctioned language—they silence opposition not by argument, but by shame. The realm of acceptable speech narrows. Dissenters are not debated—they are excommunicated.
Most chilling, Schelsky noted that this new priesthood does not tolerate even internal dissent. Heretics from within the class are hunted most fiercely of all. The state, once the dominant force, now operates in symbiosis with its intellectual vanguard, whose cultural power has quietly overtaken political power.
In Schelsky’s words, the intellectual elite lives from “the labor of others,” while labeling that labor inferior. They do not persuade the people—they infantilize them. And by constantly reinforcing a narrative of emergency, crisis, and injustice, they maintain their rule as high priests of meaning.
In recent years, we’ve seen this dynamic sharpen into something almost surreal. During the COVID era, dissent was not just discouraged—it was pathologized.
To question lockdowns, masks, vaccines? Madness.
To ask for debate? Dangerous.
Experts didn’t just recommend—they ruled.
The political class deferred to them with near-religious reverence.
And those who dared to question were branded heretics: deniers, anti-science, right-wing, irresponsible.
No guillotine needed—just deplatforming and public shaming.
But something deeper was revealed: the people no longer trust their priesthood.
The same rupture that tore down Versailles now smolders beneath the glossy panels of newsrooms, university halls, and “trust the science” campaigns.
This time, it’s not bread that’s being withheld—it’s truth.
Not incense in cathedrals, but endless white papers from think tanks and NGOs.
Not holy relics, but peer-reviewed studies.
And the people are starting to ask: Who gave you the right?
Today's intellectuals no longer speak to the people, but about them, as if the public were a case study or a pathology.
They do not persuade—they instruct.
They do not convince—they administer.
We were told to keep pace with the parade.
But some of us walk to a rhythm no algorithm can hear—
a distant drum inside us, but true.
It is not conspiracy.
It is conscience.
The robes have changed, but the old hierarchies remain—pre-Enlightenment in spirit, dressed in bureaucratic rationality.
And so, the stage is set once more.
The revolution is quieter now—less about guillotines, more about disconnection.
A silent refusal to consume mass media.
A growing decision to withdraw trust from the system altogether.
A refusal to bow to those who mistake credentials for truth.
A refusal to be managed, curated, or instructed.
A refusal to worship the new platinum expert class,
influencers in lab coats, selling salvation on subscription.
The old regime fell when people saw the aristocrats weren’t noble—just arrogant.
The new regime will fall when even the last see the experts aren’t smart—just loud.
The priesthood is back.
But this time, they forgot to bring the sacred.
And the people?
They may be slower to rise.
But rise they will.