Intellectuals and Classes: Three Theoretical Models Mehmet Yetiş This paper focuses on three theoretical models concerning the relationship between intellectuals and social classes. The first model is represented by Alvin W. Gouldner, George Konrád, and Ivan Szelényi, who contend that intellectuals form a distinct social class. I argue that this “new class” approach, which is based on the concept of “cultural capital”, can be classified within the neo- Weberian paradigm. The second model is represented by Karl Mannheim, who sees intellectuals as a classless aggregation or an interstitial stratum located between the two great classes of labor and capital. I emphasize that his “freefloating intelligentsia” is an ultra-epistemological subject, capable of making a grandiose synthesis of the conflicting ideological standpoints such as conservatism, fascism, communism, etc. The third model can be derived from the prison writings of Antonio Gramsci, whose analysis on the organic and traditional intellectuals provides a possibility for a dialectical approach to the complexity of social relations. Here, I argue that he treats the concept of intellectual in a novel way, and that he tries to uncover the hegemonic position of the dominant class with an in-depth inquiry into the relations between intellectual groups and the principal social classes in a capitalist milieu.