I don’t think a socialist society without propaganda would be much better or worse than a capitalist society without propaganda.
The differences would be almost decorative, so the socialist variant can be represented as a market of ideas in many democratic organs, with those people more successful by accepted criteria getting more resources allocated to them “for merit”.
Or the capitalist variant can be represented as a system of efficient resource distribution via accepted universal equivalent, with voluntary associations and public morale acting to help those in need.
Those would be both comprised of humans, so without propaganda you’d have normal human hierarchies, human inequality and the resistance to it, human groupings and human hostility, all the same.
Provided, of course, that both are democratic. Otherwise you’ll have Stalin’s time Soviet bosses with their palaces and lovers and cars, and you’ll have Nazi Germany’s industrialists, the former as accountable as the latter and the latter as much part of the state hierarchy as the former.
I don’t think a socialist society without propaganda would be much better or worse than a capitalist society without propaganda.
The differences would be almost decorative, so the socialist variant can be represented as a market of ideas in many democratic organs, with those people more successful by accepted criteria getting more resources allocated to them “for merit”.
Or the capitalist variant can be represented as a system of efficient resource distribution via accepted universal equivalent, with voluntary associations and public morale acting to help those in need.
Those would be both comprised of humans, so without propaganda you’d have normal human hierarchies, human inequality and the resistance to it, human groupings and human hostility, all the same.
Provided, of course, that both are democratic. Otherwise you’ll have Stalin’s time Soviet bosses with their palaces and lovers and cars, and you’ll have Nazi Germany’s industrialists, the former as accountable as the latter and the latter as much part of the state hierarchy as the former.