Not too much. My point is not meant to accept Marxism/dialectical materialism as a broad explanation of society and history. It is more reduced in scope, where the worldview of each person or social group is shaped by how they make money or achieve power.
My understanding is that history and society are affected by a lot more factors than "mode of production".
Yes, I agree and for me this is indeed different different from dialectical materialism and a much stronger Thesis and though related once taken away from Marxist Materialism, implies lots of things that diverge from Marx.
For me the greatest example is Marx's writings on Bonapartism which he tries to understand Napoleon III's political maneuvers which become rather silly and ad-hoc and the best explanation is that he wants to set himself up as an authority that uses the support of the proles and the military to coerce and control and indeed create a culture that supports him.
Crucially he does not support or act on behalf of any group and enforce their position in the actual economy and though he benefits from capital profits from taxes he benefits from workers taxes and does not want unrest.
In short he is employing a common strategy seen throughout history but one that is quite removed from the particulars of the direct economy and could support many different economic models. This for me breaks Marx's claim and his analysis is quite poor on this.
Though of course it seems we agree, so I am just putting this here because I think it's interesting.