Brussels Democratic Association

an international democratic organization uniting proletarian revolutionaries and advanced elements of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois democrats, mainly from the ranks of political émigrés. It was founded in the autumn of 1847. The German Workers’ Society in Brussels, led by K. Marx and F. Engels and others active in the Communist League, played a large role in the establishment of the Brussels Democratic Association. The Polish revolutionary I. Lelewel, the Belgian democrats L. Jottrand (elected chairman of the association) and V. Tedesco, and others joined the association. On Nov. 15, 1847, Marx was elected vice-chairman. The association tried to unite the democratic forces and mobilize them for struggle against the reactionary monarchist regimes in Europe. The Brussels Democratic Association became a major center of the international democratic movement. It maintained ties with democrats in Great Britain, Germany, France, Poland, and other countries. During the February 1848 revolution in France, the revolutionary wing of the Brussels Democratic Association came out in favor of rapid arming of the Belgian workers and developing the struggle for a democratic republic. However, after the Belgian authorities took reprisals against the more revolutionary elements of the association and after Marx was expelled from Brussels (Mar. 4, 1848), the moderate bourgeois republican wing, which was unable to lead an antimonarchist movement of the laboring masses in Belgium, became dominant in the Brussels Democratic Association. In 1849 the association factually ceased to exist.