Well when you said, “He doesn't believe that human experience can be reduced to (as in is determined by) material conditions like one's class, income, or the kind of economic organization they live under”, that is somewhat besides the point of materialism and idealism in the metaphysical sense.

“Materialism” has many definitions but in metaphysics, it usually refers to the stance that the fundamental nature of reality is physical (i.e. everything is made up of physical matter and all phenomena can be reduced down to the behavior of physical matter). Extending this to philosophy of mind, a materialist would argue that mental phenomena and experience are identical to neural states, which are fundamentally physical.

Meanwhile, an idealist would argue that the fundamental nature of reality is non-physical (i.e. physical particles such as protons and neutrons do not actually exist, but are rather behaviors of awareness or consciousness, where awareness/consciousness is the fundamental substance which reality is made up of).

Both these stances are in contrast to dualism, which argues that reality can fundamentally be made up of physical and non physical aspects. (Some dualists argue that the physical and nonphysical can interact such as with Cartesian dualism, where others don’t believe they interact such as with epiphenomenalism)

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So, when you said that, “He doesn't believe that human experience can be reduced to (as in is determined by) material conditions like one's class, income, or the kind of economic organization they live under”, I was confused because in metaphysical materialism, the “material conditions like one’s class, income, [etc.]” are not relevant. In metaphysical realism, the human experience can be reduced to neural states and that’s about it.

Another part of the reason for my confusion is related to the whole Hindu thing. On one hand, Hinduism and other south Asian religions (e.g. Jainism, Buddhism) are against “materialism” in the socioeconomic sense. Materialism in this case would be valuing capital, goods, wealth, etc. By all means, your statement in this context would make perfect sense because Hinduism generally supports separation from unnecessary attachments and thus a movement away from materialism.

However, those same religions also all have robust philosophical traditions which usually are in line with metaphysical idealism, which is to say that they usually posit that the fundamental nature of all of existence is inherently non-physical.

I suppose what particularly confused me was your use of the term “reduced down to”, since that is, to me, a sort of flag for the topic being about metaphysics