"Historical materialism" emphasizes the importance of economic factors rather than
thoughts and values in social transformation and can be defined briefly as “embracing history from a materialist point of view”, Marx specifically focuses on production.

The "base" consists of economic structure (means of production
and relations of production) and "superstructure" consists of law, politics, religion, family and ideologies.

Marx suggests that all societies except those he called primitive communal are class societies divided into two classes: who own the means of production and those who do not.