Oh, I agree on changes to the means of production themselves (more broadly, technological changes) leading to massive changes in politics and society. But those are in the "sort of happens" category, as opposed to the Great Man theory, where social change is enacted by the decisions (good or bad) of powerful and important individuals.

Read Marx, but read Tolstoy too. Tolstoy argued that we all have 20/20 hindsight, and we like to argue how well our individual ideas or pet theories explain stuff that, well, just happened.

edit: I'm suddenly thinking of Bruce Sterling's novel Zeitgeist, a sort of magical-realism SF set around Y2K. When asked who would win the culture war between Islamic fundamentalism and Western secularism, the central character said "The side with the most televisions".