People’s access to the material conditions of life sets the background of political debate. Expressing this through a famous statement, a well-known historical materialist, namely Karl Marx, claimed that “mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve; since looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation” (Marx, 1904 [1859], pp. 12-3).

From a general perspective, followers of historical materialist tradition perceived the social circumstances as putting their stamp on the way people formulate their problems regarding social justice, equality, social order and good government. Not the ideas that derive out from historical conditions and intellectual context, but the material conditions and the inherent contradictions within material circumstances were constitutive with regards to the history of mankind and history of political ideas.