just a reference point here:  the definition of "historical materialism" from
the marxists archive. Note in particular the place of the term "religious"
vis-a-vis the state.    -- david

Historical Materialism

"This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real
process of production, starting out from the material production of life
itself, and to comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and
created by this mode of production (i.e. civil society in its various
stages), as the basis of all history; describing it in its action as the
state, and to explain all the different theoretical products and forms of
consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. etc. arise from it, and
trace their origins and growth from that basis. Thus the whole thing can, of
course, be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal
action of these various sides on one another).

"It has not, like the idealistic view of history, in every period to look for
a category [eg. measuring periods of history in accordance to certain ideas],
but remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain
practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material
practice. Accordingly it comes to the conclusion that all forms and products
of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into
"self-consciousness" or transformation into "apparitions", "spectres",
"whims", etc. but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social
relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug; that not criticism but
revolution is the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy
and all other types of theory.

"It shows that history does not end by being resolved into
"self-consciousness as spirit of the spirit", but that in it at each stage
there is found a material result: a sum of productive forces, an historically
created relation of individuals to nature and to one another, which is handed
down to each generation from its predecessor; a mass of productive forces,
capital funds and conditions, which, on the one hand, is indeed modified by
the new generation, but also on the other prescribes for it its conditions of
life and gives it a definite development, a special character. It shows that
circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.