Australian Socialist League, Constitution 1901

1. Name: Australian Socialist League.

2. Object: The establishment of a Co-operative Commonwealth founded on the collective ownership of the Land and Means of Production, Distribution and Exchange.

3. Methods: The industrial and political organisation of the workers—mental and manual, distribution of socialist literature, lectures on Socialism, also social, political and industrial questions and, to attain our object (a Co-operative Commonwealth), the election of socialists to Parliament—Federal and State and Municipal Councils.

4. Membership: Any persons desirous of becoming a member of any Branch of this League shall, before being nominated, answer in the affirmative, and sign the following questions:

a) Are you convinced that the existing form of Society, which the capitalist class uphold, is based upon class supremacy, maintained by class government through the private ownership of the land and all the means of production, distribution and exchange?

b) Are you convinced that the Private ownership by the Landlord and Capitalist Class of the Land and all the means of production, distribution and exchange, subjects the working class—mental and manual—to a system of wage slavery?

c) Do you believe that the system of Capitalist wage slavery—the result of the private ownership by the Landlord and Capitalist class of the Land and all the means of Production, Distribution and Exchange—can be abolished by the working class mental and manual—politically united into a Working Class Party, standing in politics only for their own class against all the Political and Municipal parties of Capitalism?

d) Having carefully studied the Constitution, Principles, Demands, Platform, Methods and Objects of the ASL, are you prepared to uphold same?

e) Will you pledge yourself to work for the realisation of the object of the ASL, ie the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth, founded on the collective ownership of the Land and all the means of Production, Distribution and Exchange?

f) Will you pledge yourself not to be a member of or connected with, directly or indirectly, any other political party, but the party of the ASL and that you will render no support to any other political or municipal organisation or party?

James Normington Rawling Collection, ANU Archives of Business and Labour, Item N57/330. Paragraphs 5-40 have not been included as they deal with routine matters of procedure and finance. Reprinted in David Lovell, Marxism and Australian Socialism before the Bolshevik Revolution, p.263