Civilization, like so many words in common usage, is really a complex phenomenon with different meanings and connotations for different nations and classes. Broadly it refers to a state of bringing nature under human control, creating nurture out of nature.

There are two very important struggles in human life: the struggle with nature; and the struggle with other humans. It is through the struggle with nature that humans are able to get the means of sustaining their life: the food they eat, the clothes they wear and the houses in which they live. There are also all the instruments which help them in the process of their wrestling with nature. Human beings do also struggle with one another for the control of the entire environment of the production and share-out of the means of sustaining themselves. A few observations arise from that. Those two struggles are changing all the time. They are also uneven. Some people may develop better and more complicated tools for dealing with nature and with each other than other peoples. They might be in a position to construct a more complex social environment than others at the same time.

So when humans lived completely at the mercy of nature, of which they were a part, they could not be described as having become civilized. But when human beings joined hands and started taming nature and in the process developed tools, they were taking the first steps towards civilization. In other words, human labour, co-operative human labour, is basic to the process of civilization. It is through co-operative labour that human beings have been able to create a social environment, what can be called a second nature, a social nature or simply nurture. For as long as human beings were slaves to nature, they were always at the mercy of the unpredictable whims of nature, they were not civilized. But it is equally true that if human beings become slaves to social nature they cannot be said to be civilized.

Civilization is not a static state because actions on nature are changing all the time. Also actions between human beings can change the social environment for better or worse. Different people have had different civilizations at different times. Civilizations do rise and fall, do in fact change, even for the same nations and races.