<!-- generated: provider=openrouter model=arcee-ai/trinity-large-preview:free date=2026-02-19 source=book-4-chapter-09 -->

# Barren or Unproductive Class

## Definition

The class of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants who are considered by agricultural systems to be unproductive because their labour only replaces the value of the stock that employs them and their own consumption, without generating any net increase in the annual produce of land and labour.

## Source Chapter

Book IV, Chapter 9

## Context

Smith describes how agricultural systems denigrate merchants, artificers, and manufacturers as "barren" or "unproductive" because their work merely continues the existence of capital value without creating new value, contrasting this with the productive class of cultivators who generate surplus produce.

## Economic Domain

Distribution

---
