I largely agree with you. I think Kuhn is interesting in this regard because I feel that he does give some value to the idea of history being about material class struggle, despite Kuhn not subscribing to Marxist thought. In that way, his ideas wrt to paradigm shifts in science is important - despite the idea that science is a cascading wave of progress, history shows that what drove a lot of scientific advancement was parallel to the material needs and desires of the parties involved. This is a key point that many in the scientific fields tend to overlook, and view scientific methodology as being unerring. That's not to say the science that they're doing is right or wrong, but the historical process certainly isn't rational when it comes to scientific progress.