What would the modern day equivalent of a soviet look like?

[oneday]

Do you think a parallel government structure comprised of federated representative councils is a relevant idea that could lead to socialism? How and why would these types of organizations form in modern society and what would be their agenda?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The soviets were never intended to be federated. The central level of the system - the Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee - were mostly elected from the basic level, from city and town soviets. Generally, elections to these bodies were complicated and were often supplemented with co-optation and appointment. The picture that some people have in mind - that city soviets elected delegates to guberniya soviets that elected delegates to regional soviets that elected delegates to the Congress of Soviets - is simply not correct.

And yes, I think soviet organs - not necessarily geographic soviets (Russia after the October Revolution had a number of collegial organs of workers' rule, from soviets to factory committees, councils of elders etc.) - are important in the transitional period. Not because they're councils, and definitely not because I think every group of workers represented by some council needs to act as an autonomous unit (the petit-bourgeois utopia of federalism), but because soviet organs are working organs, not talk-shops. They enable society to administer itself without a cadre of professional civil servants (see Marx's statement about how parliaments talk and debate, but real decisions are made in the ministries and chancelleries).

As for how these organs will be formed, they will be formed during the struggles of the working class. The soviets didn't fall from the heavens one day, they were organs formed by workers - first with a reformist and conciliatory orientation (the first soviets to be formed during WWI were mainly concerned with avoiding strike actions to enable efficient production of war materiel, just as on the government's side the glavky and tsentry worked to fix prices so that the capitalist state wouldn't be ruined by the stupid greed of the individual capitalists), they were later revolutionised. It stands to reason the same process will happen again.

[Blake's Baby]

They look like the workers' councils that sprang up last weeek during the metal-workers' strike in Turkey.

http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2015-05-19/auto-struggles-in-turkey-we-don-t-want-any-unions-we-have-set-up-workers