For as long as work has existed, so has the hierarchy that defines it. Some jobs are seen as prestigious, others as undesirable. But who decides which work deserves respect and which work is dispensable?
Why do we praise the corner-office executive but overlook the carpenter who built that office? Why does a stockbroker earn exponentially more than a plumber, when we will always need plumbers?
These questions may seem abstract, but they lie at the heart of how capitalism has shaped our understanding of labour, value and dignity.
Hollywood has played a crucial role in this process. Over time, it has crafted and reinforced a specific image of success — the suave stockbroker in a tailored suit, shouting at his secretary in a sleek office with a panoramic view of the city. That became the aspiration. That became the definition of a “career”.
Meanwhile, the people who keep the world running — the electricians, the shoemakers, the tilers — became invisible. You almost never see a plumber on television unless it’s for comedic effect, as if the work itself is something to laugh at.
This is not a coincidence. It is a deliberate social construction designed to make people aspire to the world of finance, law and corporate power rather than manual labour. It is a way of devaluing essential work and pushing people into a system where wealth is made not through production, but through speculation.
After World War 2, the American economy boomed, fuelled by the Marshall Plan, military expansion, and exploitation of global resources. The result? A shift in the concept of work itself. The physical, tangible labour that built the country — factories, farms, trade work — was devalued in favour of using money to make more money.
Capital itself became a commodity, and suddenly, work was not about creating, but about circulating wealth. That was the moment when certain types of jobs became unfashionable.
Take a plumber, for example. No matter how much technology advances, humans will always eat and poop, which means we will always need someone to deal with the consequences. Robots might be sophisticated enough to drive cars, but they are too refined to handle our sewage.
We need welders, tilers, electricians and carpenters. No civilisation — no matter how modern — will ever function without them. And yet, their work has been systematically devalued.
What capitalism has done is not just create economic inequality, it has created hierarchies of labour. It has assigned status to certain professions and rendered others undesirable. And, in doing so, it has also exported manual labour to the East.
China, for example, built its global dominance precisely by doing the work that Western economies no longer wanted to do. It became the world’s factory, while the West focused on financial speculation and technology.
In southern Africa, the impact of this is clear.
If you ask a middle-class person, “who made your shoes?” they probably won’t know. If you need a skilled carpenter, chances are the best one in your area is from Malawi or Mozambique. That’s not a critique of local talent — it’s an indictment of the fact that our system does not prioritise skills training.
We have millions of unemployed young people, yet we rely on migrant labour for artisanship. Instead of building a generation of skilled workers, we’ve built a generation dependent on social grants.
This raises a fundamental question: who decides what work is valuable? Why is my work as a deputy minister seen as 10 times more valuable than that of a woodcutter?
If I don’t have wood, I can’t be an efficient parliamentarian. But somehow, the system has decided that I should earn 10 times more, while the woodcutter barely survives.
The truth is that the entire structure of work is based on power, not necessity. Some work is made fashionable because it aligns with the interests of capital. Other work is made invisible because it does not. And yet, all work is interconnected. A world without poets and musicians would be bleak, but a world without sanitation workers would be unliveable.
I read something this week: “If AI can do my dishes, I’ll be happy because then I can focus on writing poetry.”
This idea is often presented as a utopian vision — that we should all be freed from manual labour to pursue intellectual or artistic interests. But is that really the goal? The real question is, why is some labour seen as a burden and other labour seen as a privilege? Why does a poet’s time matter more than a plumber’s?
Someday, we may reach a point where society recognises that all labour — whether manual or intellectual — has dignity. Someday, the carpenter and the congressman will be seen as equal contributors to society. Someday, bad poetry may even become poetry. DM