Worth Keeping in Mind

...[M]ass, lower-class participants in revolution cannot turn discontent into effective political action without autonomous collective organization and resources to sustain their efforts. Moreover, the repressive state organizations of the prerevolutionary regime have to be weakened before mass revolutionary action can succeed, or even emerge. Indeed, historically, mass rebellious action has not be able, in itself, to overcome state repression.
Theda Skocpol, from Social Revolutions in the Modern World, quoted in the Duck of Minerva