Yes. It's much more understandable that way (and I don't have a useless Marxist academic position to justify). Frankly, I find it rather difficult to disagree with the premise of historical materialism.

You can disagree with Marx's conclusions about which factors were important, but the basic assumption seems solid. The major exception that comes to mind where ideas might dominate material need is a situation present in the US today where the media so dominantly control narrative, they have been able to mostly squeeze other ideas out of the discourse. This is sort of like fighting entropy, possible, but requires extra energies to do.

I hadn't heard of conflict theory before, so thanks for the tip.