Workers' council in the context of "Dual power"

Soviet democracy, also called council democracy, is a type of democracy in Marxism, in which the rule of a population is exercised by directly elected soviets (workers' councils). Soviets are directly responsible to their electors and bound by their instructions using a delegate model of representation. Such an imperative mandate is in contrast to a trustee model, in which elected delegates are exclusively responsible to their conscience. Delegates may accordingly be dismissed from their post at any time through recall elections. Soviet democracy forms the basis for the soviet republic system of government. This model has influenced anarchist-communist theorists, who have adopted federalist council democracy for its focus on bottom-up self-administration.

In a soviet democracy, people are organized in basic units; for example, the workers of a company, the inhabitants of a district, or the soldiers of a barracks. They directly elect delegates as public functionaries, which act as legislators, government, and courts in one. Soviets are elected on several levels; at the residential and business level, delegates are sent through plenary assemblies to a local council which, in turn, delegates members to the next level. This system of delegation (indirect election) continues to a body such as the Congress of Soviets or the Supreme Soviet at the state level. The electoral processes thus take place from the bottom upward. The levels are usually tied to administrative levels. In contrast to earlier democratic models à la John Locke and Montesquieu, no separation of powers exists in soviet democracy.

A soviet (Russian: совет, romanized: sovet, IPA: [sɐˈvʲet] , lit. 'council') is a workers' council that follows a socialist ideology, particularly in the context of the Russian Revolution. Soviets acted as the foundation of the form of government of Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union, and influenced the Makhnovshchina.

The first soviets were established during the 1905 Revolution in the late Russian Empire. In 1917, following the February Revolution, a state of dual power emerged between the Russian Provisional Government and the soviets. This ended later that year with the October Revolution, during which the Second Congress of Soviets proclaimed itself as the supreme governing body of the country.

A soviet republic (from Russian: советская республика, romanized: sovetskaya respublika), also called a council republic, conciliar republic or sovietic republic, is a republic in which the government is formed of soviets (workers' councils) and politics are based on soviet democracy. During the Revolutions of 1917–1923, various revolutionary workers' movements across Europe declared independence or otherwise formed governments as soviet republics. Although the term is usually associated with the republics of the Soviet Union, it was not initially used to represent the political organisation of the Soviet Union, but merely a system of government.

Workers' control is participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists (notably Trotskyists), communists, social democrats, distributists and Christian democrats, and has been combined with various socialist and mixed economy systems.

Workers' councils are a form of workers' control. Council communism, such as in the early Soviet Union, advocates workers' control through workers' councils and factory committees. Syndicalism advocates workers' control through trade unions. Guild socialism advocates workers' control through a revival of the guild system. Participatory economics represents a recent variation on the idea of workers' control.

The German workers' and soldiers' councils of 1918–1919 (German: Deutsche Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte) were short-lived revolutionary bodies that spread the German revolution to cities across the German Empire during the final days of World War I. Meeting little to no resistance, they formed quickly, took over city governments and key buildings, caused most of the locally stationed military to flee and brought about the abdications of all of Germany's ruling monarchs, including Emperor Wilhelm II, when they reached Berlin on 9 November 1918.

Although the communist Spartacus League and the left wing of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) wanted to set up a system of council communism in Germany, they were a minority in the councils. Most members wanted an end to the war and to German militarism and the establishment of a parliamentary republic dominated by the moderate Social Democratic Party (SPD). Germany's interim national revolutionary government, the Council of the People's Deputies, was initially a coalition of the SPD and the USPD, but in it and in the majority of the other councils across Germany, the SPD was able to keep the far left on the sidelines. During the two large gatherings of workers' and soldiers' councils in Berlin, the voting generally followed the wishes of the SPD leadership. Crucially, and against the will of the radical left, they were able to schedule an election for a national assembly that would allow all Germans to determine the country's future form of government.

The Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Delegates (Russian: Петербургский совет рабочих депутатов, romanized: Peterburgskiy sovet rabochikh deputatov; later the Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies) was a workers' council, or soviet, in Saint Petersburg in 1905.

Participatory economics, often abbreviated parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impact on a person or group of people. Participatory economics is a form of a socialist decentralized planned economy involving the collective ownership of the means of production. It is a proposed alternative to contemporary capitalism and centralized planning. This economic model is primarily associated with political theorist Michael Albert and economist Robin Hahnel, who describes participatory economics as an anarchist economic vision.

The underlying values that parecon seeks to implement are: equity, solidarity, diversity, workers' self-management, efficiency (defined as accomplishing goals without wasting valued assets), and sustainability. The institutions of parecon include workers' and consumers' councils utilising self-managerial methods for decision-making, balanced job complexes, remuneration based on individual effort, and wide decentralized planning. In parecon, self-management constitutes a replacement for the mainstream conception of economic freedom, which Albert and Hahnel argue by its very vagueness has allowed it to be abused by capitalist ideologues.