# Productive Class ## Definition The class of cultivators, farmers, and country labourers who are distinguished by their ability to reproduce annually a neat produce that remains after paying all necessary expenses, thereby increasing the real revenue and wealth of society through their productive labour. ## Source Chapter Book IV, Chapter 9 ## Context Smith explains how agricultural systems classify society into three classes, with cultivators being designated as the "productive class" because their labour not only replaces its own value but generates a surplus that increases national wealth, unlike the barren or unproductive class of artificers and manufacturers. ## Economic Domain Production ---