Materialism vs Idealism

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believe that human society is based on material forces. In other words, in order for any human society to exist, humans must produce the necessities of life which enable us to survive: food, shelter, water, etc. These are material things without which we would die out. But the way we interact to produce these necessities, who controls the products of our labour and how they use them, determines the type of society we live in.

At the beginning: evolution

WITHOUT CERTAIN physical factors, human society as we know it could not have developed: the large human brain, the voice box and the opposable thumb. The development and growth of the brain and the voice box happened because of the way early humans evolved in interaction with their environment. They were less well adapted to their environment than many species and compensated for this by working together in large groups and developing tools.

The growth of the physical size of the human brain, which is much larger than any ...

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But this is not true. The earliest human societies were classless societies based on co-operation and consensus, without the systematic exploitation or oppression of any one group by another.

This type of society, which is usually called hunter-gatherer society, was not a brief change from the 'normal' exploitation and oppression we see in class society. It was the only way human society was organised for over 100,000 years, until class society began developing around 10,000 years ago. Even today there are a few areas around the world where hunter-gatherer societies still exist, though this may not be the case for much longer (all of them are under pressure to become absorbed into the ...

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