The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. Wherever the bourgeoisie go they undermine traditional ways of doing things. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. The accompanying poverty amidst plenty and enslavement by wage labour were the price to be paid for social and technological progress. All previous movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities.
Political power is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another.
Three points should be made by way of clarification. In the circumstances of the time it seemed logical to Marx and the League that they should accept that for the moment their interests coincided with those of the bourgeois democrats, until such time as the absolutist regimes had been overthrown, and should then continue their struggle against the new bourgeois regimes. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. Compare the widely available published version with the original wording reproduced here, especially in section two. They pinned their hopes on the power of reason rather than the class struggle of the proletariat.