The full quote:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

I'm not so much asking about whether the thesis is worth taking on as some grand historical narrative that applies to all events in history (I'm guesses the answer to that would be no) but am more interested in historians going over specific events in history (like revolutions, but perhaps other events this quote would apply to as well) and seeing how well this thesis "plays out" in those events.