Productivity determines production relations, which react on productivity, and production relations must adapt to the essential laws of productivity; The economic base determines the superstructure, and the superstructure reacts on the economic base. Superstructure must adapt to the law of economic base development, which is the basic law of human social development.
Historical idealism starts from people's thoughts and motives and denies that social development has its own laws; On the contrary, historical materialism, starting from the process of social material life, advocates that society is changing and developing, and this change and development has its objective laws.
Extended data:
The law of social development is the inevitable connection of historical development. Acknowledging historical inevitability does not harm people's role in history at all, nor does it deny that people can gain freedom in social activities. Because all social history is made up of human activities, the law of social development only reveals the conditions under which human activities can ensure success and thus gain freedom.
Historical materialism regards the realization of freedom as an understanding of inevitability and transforms society according to this understanding. People can't transform or abolish the laws of social development, but they can know and master these laws in practice, follow and apply them in their own actions, transform society and gain freedom. In social life, in the final analysis, people can only achieve freedom within the limits and scope allowed by their own productivity.