…and yet be careful how you define “abilities” concerning intelligence and consider the context that exists in which abilities are used to become intelligent.
If Person X and person Y possess the same general cognitive capacity and more or less the same intellectual integrity before they recieve education which teaches them their skills, then one cannot say that the “intelligence” is inconsequential and something that one person possesses a greater degree of, than the other, neccesarily.
In other words, person X and person Y are both tabula rasas. It is the context of the circumstances surrounding the education that is provided by each, and so therefore it is not, ipso facto, a matter of outright calling one person more intelligent than another; the brick-mason could’ve been trained as a doctor, or at least be as intelligent as, had the educational context been different.
So rather than forming an argument for a claim that “some people are more valuable because they end up more intelligent,” you must keep in mind that the development of such intelligence is not partial to only one “class,” and is instead contingent to the context of education.
If you wish to say that some people are inherently more intelligent, then you are making a different argument. My argument is that the value of a service and the capacity to perform that service is something developed and contained, and its importance is not determined because of the market “value” if affords to the consumer public.
To say that productivity is contingent to the greater intellectual strengths of “those who will become doctors” is to also say “it is impossible to turn a brick-mason into a doctor with the proper education.” This is false.
From here you must keep in mind that the market value is just as much a developmental process as is the capacities of the various trades and professions, and that valuable people, as far as their “productivity” is concerned, are determined by something irrelevent and insignificant when you consider that it is based on a system without equal privileges.
If you wish to say simply “well, somebody has to do the dirty work,” I will agree, but that certainly doesn’t mean that the productivity of the doctor is more valuable, precisely because the roles and careers could’ve been revearsed, and because the context of money and its value is dependent on a market…which is in turn can be controlled rather than controlling.
No, every form of commodity production is just as neccessary as the other and just as important. Who ends up doing what as a profession is containable and controllable by social sciences and conventions.