Fundamentally, historical materialism, if we are to put it into practice, violates liberalism as profoundly as political Islam does, albeit in different ways. But most remaining Western Marxists keep our historical materialism in the same space -- small private quarters to which liberalism has assigned all political philosophies other than itself -- where liberal Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc. keep their religions (or rather in smaller quarters than theirs, for the religious at least have their local congregations and transnational networks which are far more materially consequential than what Western Marxists have). In other words, in the West, Marxists are allowed to have Marxism only on the conditions that we not seek to reconstitute society based upon its tenets.
Analytical Marxism may be said to be an ideological reflection of the real conditions of all Marxists in the West, regardless of whether we positively endorse this school of Marxism. We can have other schools of Marxism, as you and I do. But even if we are to make a different school of Marxism (yours or mine or whatever) than analytical Marxism prevail among Marxists, it still doesn't change the overall state of the Marxist tradition in the West.
At this point in history, therefore, debates internal to Marxism are essentially academic pursuits, indeed mainly pursued by Marxist academics. It's not very useful for Marxists to preach Marxism to other Marxists, trying to win the latter to their schools of Marxism.
Strange as it may seem, historical materialism in the West today, qualified by insights of such theorists as Michel Foucault, may be most useful for understanding the question of sexuality on the international level rather than resisting the interests of the capitalist class advanced by the US-led multinational empire, which Chavistas, populist Islamists, etc. do far better than Marxists _in practice_ (though not in theory). Western liberals advance their cultural particularism as if it were cultural universalism, positing their culture as the end of humanity and their path as the universal path of development; those Muslims and others who are not liberals tend toward cultural relativism, mistaking what capitalist modernity has created in the West as if it were the timeless essence of the West to be distinguished from the timeless essence of their cultures. Historical materialism differs from both, seeing contingent evolutions of diverse ways of life, now all colored in the ether of the capitalist mode of production to various degrees, which may or may not converge in the future that is still open. -- Yoshie