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A workers' council is a deliberative assembly, composed of working class or proletarian members, intended to facilitate workers' self-management or workers' control. Unlike a trade union, in a workers' council the workers are assumed to be in actual control of the workplace, rather than merely negotiating with employers through collective bargaining. They are a form of "workplace democracy."

Workers' councils have arisen repeatedly through modern history with a variety of names. Notable instances include Russia during 1917, where the councils were called "soviets," Germany during 1918, Turin, Italy during 1919-1920, Spain during 1936, Hungary during 1956, France during 1968, Chile in 1973 (cordones), and Iran during 1978-1979 (shoras).

The key features of a workers' council include the phenomenon that a single place of work, such as a factory, school, or farm, is controlled collectively by the workers of that workplace. Basically a group of workers from that workplace acts as the manager. Therefore there is no real "manager," as the council itself controls the workplace.

Councils operate on the principle of recallable delegates. This means that elected delegates may be recalled at any time through a vote in a form of impeachment.

Workers' councils combine to elect higher bodies for coordinating between one another. This means that the upper councils are not supperior to the lower councils, but are instead built from and operated by them. The national council would therefore have delegates from every city in the country. Their nature means that workers' councils do away with traditional centralized governments and instead give the power directly to the people. This type of democratic order is called council democracy.

During the Russian Revolution of 1917 and German Revolution in 1918, the workers' councils replaced the old political institutions and bureaucracy which excluded people with a right-wing political alignment.

Marxists believe that workers' councils (communes) embody the fundamental principles of socialism, such as workers' control over production and distribution as well as workers' control of the state. Indeed, some have described this as "socialism from below," which they counterpose against what they see as "socialism from above" endorsed by social democratic ideology and Stalinism. According to this view, socialism from above is carried out by a centralized state run by a bureaucratic apparatus and can result in a deformed or degenerated workers' state, while socialism from below represents the self-administration and self-rule of the working class.

Most, if not all Marxists support a council-based dictatorship of the proletariat and have disdain for pure representative democracy, this view is based on Marx's analysis of the Paris Commune a workers' council itself. Orthodox Marxists believe that only the workers themselves can spark the revolution and so workers' councils will be the foundation of the proletarian revolution. Leninists believe that if the workers do not gain class consciousness on their own then a revolution can be achieved through a vanguard party or common front.

Some notable advocates of a society based on workers' councils are the council communist movement, various anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-communist groups, most democratic socialist especially revolutionary democratic socialists, such as the Socialist Party USA, and some Trotskyist groups, such as the International Socialist Organization, as well as the Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

• Co-determination
• De Leonism
• Factory committee
• Industrial democracy
• Industrial Workers of the World
• Socialist Party USA
• Luxemburgism
• Paris Commune
• Solidarity (UK)
• Council democracy
• Syndicalism
• Works council