“Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality before the law and the recognition of free competition, and in European countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters – that is to say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the deputies, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.”

Principles of Communism (1847)

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

Source: Reform or Revolution (1899), Ch.8

Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 381–492.
Collected Works

Source: The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Section 2, paragraph 72 (last paragraph).

Je crois que le pouvoir politique s’exerce encore, s’exerce en outre, de plus, par l’intermédiaire d’un certain nombre d’institutions qui ont l’air comme ça de n’avoir rien de commun avec le pouvoir politique, qui ont l’air d’en être indépendantes et qui ne le sont pas.
Debate with Noam Chomsky, École Supérieure de Technologie à Eindhoven, November 1971

(1847)

Source: The Communist Manifesto (1848), Section 2 paragraph 7.

Cited in Davidson's (1977) Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography. London: Merlin Press., p. 77.