The "Wood Theft Debate" was the turning point. The Prussian government had passed a law making it a crime for poor peasants to gather deadfall (fallen twigs and branches) from forests owned by the rich. Marx watched, horrified, as the state used the law to steal the air from the lungs of the poor. He realized that the law was not rational; it was a weapon of the rich.
The publication of the Manifesto marks the end of "The Young Marx." The revolutions of 1848 failed. Marx was exiled again, eventually settling in London, where he grew poor, ill, and cautious. He traded his revolutionary journalism for dense economic volumes. The Young Karl Marx
His solution was to move the paper to a more radical stance until the Prussian government shut it down entirely. Forced into exile, Marx fled to Paris. At 25, he was a political refugee with no steady income, a pregnant wife (Jenny von Westphalen, a noblewoman who gave up everything for him), and a furious determination to change the world. The "Wood Theft Debate" was the turning point