That's Leo Strauss's view. Conservatives are fatalistic about the divide between elites and everyone else, whereas liberals want everyone to have the same opportunities. And according to Strauss, modernists erred in undermining the elites by spreading knowledge to the masses, whereas the ancients hid it in writing that hardly anyone could read. So is the advance of literacy also counterproductive?

Personally, I'm torn on this issue (not on literacy but on the divide between conservatives and liberals, regarding elitism).