Morris was appointed Treasurer and Editor of the new organ of the League, the Commonweal, with Dr. Edward Aveling as sub-editor, and J.L. Mahon was appointed Secretary. Headquarters and printing premises were opened at 27 Farringdon Street, and the first monthly issue of the Commonweal, which appeared in February 1885, contained Morris' song, 'The March of the Workers,' and the manifesto of the League.
The manifesto was mainly devoted to an exposition of the economic and moral principles of Socialism, or rather of Communism. No stress was laid upon anti-parliamentary methods. Mere 'State Socialism,' whose 'aim would be to leave the present system of capital and wages still in operation,' is repudiated, as are also 'merely administrative changes, until the workers are in possession of all political power.' The Socialist League, it declared, therefore aimed at 'the realisation of complete revolutionary Socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in any country without the help of the workers of all civilisation. For us neither geographical boundaries, political history, race nor creed makes rivals or enemies; for us there are no nations, but only varied masses of workers and friends, whose mutual sympathies are checked or perverted by groups of masters or fleecers whose interests are to stir up rivalries between the dwellers in distant lands.'
The manifesto indeed was such as any Socialist believing in parliamentary action directed towards 'complete revolutionary Socialism' might sign without reservation. In fact most of the signatories were avowedly parliamentarians. It was not until the friction between the Federation and the League had greatly sharpened their differences on the subject of political policy that Morris and the League members generally became definitely hostile to parliamentary methods of advancing the Socialist cause. And this hostility to parliamentary action, as we shall see later on, only lasted, as far as Morris and most of the original members of the League are concerned, for a period of a few years.
