A passage from Eugene Genovese which may be of some assistance in adjudicating recent debates about the riots in the UK:
Should the slave revolts, then, be viewed as increasingly futile, pathetic, or even insane efforts doomed to defeat and historically productive of no better result than the inevitable ensuing repression? Should we say of the slave revolts, as Marc Bloch did of the peasant revolts of medieval France, that they qualified as disorganized outbursts which counted for little or nothing when weighed against the achievements of the peasants in building their own communities? The question, however compelling, must be turned around: What could the slaves have accomplished if their masters had had no fear of getting their throats cut? (Roll, Jordan, Roll, 595)
Marxist Marginalia 