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# 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

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