"Improve material conditions" might just be a Marxist Thought Terminating Cliché.
Two days late to this take but I'm actually inclined to agree with it bc 9/10 times someone simply saying 'improve material conditions' never follows that up with what conditions they intend to improve, any kind of idea or starter for a plan to execute, or how their hypothetical improvements would change the conditions they observe. Like, we talk about Marxism being a science a lot but a lot of novices talk about it without really following the Scientific Method.
Maybe I'm just a walking incendiary by nature (don't laugh!) but frankly, I don't consider that harsh in the slightest-- if anything that's just the fact of the matter; and I'd expect at the very least an exposition kin to what you've written about the divorce law reforms post-October Revolution out of anyone seriously looking to deploy the material conditions cliché. There's a dogmatism in not doing so, I think; and makes that particular comrade's implementation of Marxism little more than religion at least from where I sit.