Can socialism through democracy truly be achieved without coercion?

With the recent wins of democratic socialists in U.S. congressional primary elections, I’ve been questioning whether democratic socialism is really all that different from classical Marxist socialism in the long term.

From my understanding, the difference between Marx’s classical interpretation of socialism and the modern democratic socialist movement is that Marx calls for a revolution against the bourgeoisie to establish a state in which workers seize and control the means of production, while democratic socialists prefer to achieve this through elected officials whose legislation gives greater power to workers, ultimately striving toward the goal of worker ownership of the means of production.

This raises the age-old question: How could this be achievable in a world where resource scarcity and greed make a socialist state difficult to maintain without a system to resist the tendencies of human nature, and guide and enforce a classless society?

And if an authoritarian system is needed to enforce this society, does that not create a similar power structure to what Marx argues capitalism creates, where there are two distinct classes? Except instead of the owner class vs. the workers, it becomes the people vs. those within the political apparatus enforcing the socialist system.