In order to achieve these reforms, and eventually "To wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State,"[8] they urge the formation of labor parties as soon as proper preparations have been made and the time is ripe for effective class action. All through the Manifesto runs the motif that every class struggle is a political struggle. Again and again Marx and Engels return to that thought in their masterly survey of the historical conflicts between the classes. They show how the bourgeoisie, beginning as "an oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility," gradually ... "conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway," until to-day "the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."[9] Tracing the rise of the modern working class, they tell of its purely retaliative efforts against the capitalists; how at first "they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze"; how they fight in "incoherent" masses, "broken up by their mutual competition";[10] even their unions are not so much a result of their conscious effort as they are the consequence of oppression. Furthermore, the workers "do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies."[11] "Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers."[12] It is when their unions grow national in character and the struggle develops into a national struggle between the classes that it naturally takes on a political character. Then begins the struggle for conquering political power. But, while "all previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities, the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority."[13] Returning again to the underlying thought, it is pointed out that the working class must "win the battle of democracy."[14] It must acquire "political supremacy." It must raise itself to "the position of ruling class," in order that it may sweep away "the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally."[15]