Late Stage Capitalism

One of the most important elements in successful revolutions is recruiting class traitors. They have the means to make it successful and work the establishment from the inside as well.

I found a paper that seems to be arguing that you're right about motive, but that the literate French revolutionaries were smarter about it:

It has been widely argued that the growth of mass literacy is critical for the development of modern forms of contentious politics. Recent Scholarship, however, has challenged this view. This study explores the relationship between levels of literacy in rural France toward the end of 18th century and the extent and nature of peasant mobilization at the beginning of the French Revolution. It is found that literacy did not promote rural disturbances as such but that the forms and targets of peasant actions in the more literate areas difered from those in the less literate. The less literate districts were notable for mobilization against rumored but nonexistent invasions, whereas the most literate districts nurtured attacks on the central social institutions of the Old Regime.

I think the barrier is that inability to read critically and meaningfully creates a fertile environment for propaganda, which can prevent the unity needed for an uprising (and has been doing a depressingly good job at that for a while now.)