I still think we're talking past one another. By Big Theory, I think I mean what Chomsky rejects, which is the pretensions that social science needs to trade in "sophisticated" (i.e., unclear) ideas in order to produce results. To me, Big Theorists are the people who over-rate theory and smother everything (usually including their own vacuity) in its verbiage. Louis Althusser and virtually all post-modernists are prime examples of that, IMHO.
Marx, Freud, and, say, Erich Fromm are indeed the biggest of the big in terms of supplying smart ideas/theories. But aren't their ideas ultimately simple, despite the labor that went/goes into acquiring and producing them? Marx: Ruling classes live via exploitation of underlings. Freud: Growing up in modern society is damned hard. Fromm: Class society perverts and suppresses love and the other ultimate goods.
I shall post no more forever (today)...