Breaking down the question
At 10 marks the command analyse asks for a compact, structured account of the salient features — the defining, load-bearing elements of the theory, not every nuance. The word salient is doing real work: it tells the candidate to select and prioritise, presenting historical materialism as a small set of connected propositions rather than an undifferentiated summary of Marx.
Historical materialism is Marx's theory of history and society — the claim that the way people organise the production of their material life determines the shape of their social, political, and intellectual existence. An answer must name and connect its core features: the materialist premise, the mode of production, base and superstructure, class struggle, and dialectical change.
At this length there is no room for a long critique, but a single evaluative closing line — placing the theory or noting its determinist edge — lifts the answer above pure description.
How to approach it
Open with the materialist premise in one or two sentences: people must produce their means of subsistence before anything else, so material production is the foundation of social life. This frames every feature that follows.
Then present the features as a linked chain — mode of production (forces plus relations), base and superstructure, class struggle, and dialectical change through contradiction — so the reader sees a system, not a glossary. The note on Marx's historical materialism and class and the profile of Karl Marx supply the framework and the textual anchors.
Close with a crisp evaluative sentence. Given the marks, brevity is a virtue: a tight, well-ordered answer scores higher than a sprawling one.
Model answer
Historical materialism is Marx's theory of how societies are structured and how they change, developed with Engels in The German Ideology and compressed in the 1859 Preface. Its starting premise is materialist: human beings must first produce their means of subsistence, so the way production is organised conditions the whole of social life. In Marx's formula, social being determines consciousness, not the reverse. Its salient features are these.
The mode of production. The central category is the mode of production — the union of the forces of production (technology, tools, labour, raw materials) and the relations of production (the class and property relationships through which production is carried on). Each epoch of history — primitive communism, ancient slavery, feudalism, capitalism — is defined by its dominant mode.
Base and superstructure. The economic organisation of society forms its base, upon which rises a superstructure of law, politics, religion, and ideas. The base conditions the superstructure, so that the ruling ideas of any age tend to be the ideas of its economically dominant class. Ideology thus works to legitimate existing arrangements.
Class struggle. Because the relations of production divide society into those who own the means of production and those who must labour for them, conflict of interest is built into the structure. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Class antagonism, not harmony, is the motor of history.
Dialectical change. History advances through contradiction. As the forces of production develop, they outgrow the existing relations of production, which turn from spurs into fetters. This contradiction is resolved through revolution, which ushers in a new mode of production. Capitalism, Marx held, breeds its own gravedigger in the proletariat and gives way to socialism.
Assessment. Historical materialism remains a powerful account of the link between economic structure and social power, though its economic determinism is often judged too rigid to explain the full plurality of social life and the persistence of non-class identities.
Examiner's perspective
For a 10-mark answer the examiner wants coverage and structure delivered efficiently. Scripts that ramble lose more than they gain; the reward goes to a candidate who names the salient features and connects them into a system in disciplined prose.
The single most common weakness is confusing the forces and relations of production, or blurring base and superstructure. Getting these distinctions exactly right is a quick discriminator that signals genuine command of Marx.
A one-line evaluative close — noting the theory's enduring insight into inequality alongside the charge of economic determinism — shows the examiner an analytical rather than merely reproductive grasp, which is what separates the top scripts at this length.