With Lockheed you are forced to choose between being complacent with it because they supply Ukraine's defense against occupation by an imperialist power or outright oppose it due to its supplying towards the Palestinian genocide. The genocide is a dealbreaker in any capacity for me. Even ignoring the genocide, the bad outweighs the good to me by a longshot. I oppose it just like how I oppose McDonald's, Amazon, Starbucks, and more.
One, the issue isn't the production of weapons in of itself. Weapons are used for defense, survival, and recreation which are (in my opinion) ethical. The issue is "defense" contractors like Lockheed are not producing weapons to defend against exploitation, oppression, etc. They are produced for imperialist powers to defend the interests of exploitors, oppressors, and war mongers.
Secondly, I am an anarchist. Statist "communists" are often no better than capitalists to me.
I do think there is nuance to the situation and exceptions. Your example being one. But I would consider Lockheed (the example of the original post) would be the no brainer one. Those weapons aren't going to defending my family from an imperialist power, they are going to death squads in South America and committing genocide in Palestine.
I mean yes there is a sort of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" dilemma when it comes to working. But just with that dilemma, you don't just give up, you try to minimize your participation as much as you can healthily do. And I think not working for a corp who's sole purpose is to develop weapons for killing people is one of those no brainers.
I don't believe we should have nation elections. I believe in horizontally organized systems, not hierarchical ones. So that seems to be the misunderstanding.
Yeah you are right, I am living in it right now and it fucking sucks and doesn't work. I am watching it descend into fascism because that is the inevitable cycle of capitalism and liberal democracy. If you want examples of anarchism working internally you can look at the CNT-FAI of the Spanish Civil War and how they organized, or the currently existing Zapatistas. Fact of the matter is anarchism hasn't failed because it doesn't work as a method of organization, it hasn't worked because they haven't been able to defend themselves when they end up having to fight a war on multiple fronts. Which if you are going to criticize anarchism, that is where you do it. In its ability to defend itself when its being attacked on all sides and its tendency to end up in that position in the first place.
I do not think centralizing control and decision making is the answer to that. What little decentralization America has rn is exactly what is protecting states like Maine from being completely in the pocket of fascists. The answer is further decentralization to the point people do not have power over others.
I've never seen someone explain how liberal democracy and capitalism can work on a large scale with billions of people. The issue with your logic though is it doesn't need to. Billions of people do not need to work together all at the same time and don't need to all be included on every plan, decision, or whatever. It doesn't need to work on a scale larger than it is able to work at because the foundation of power originates from the bottom and stays there, it is organized horizontally. Hierarchy is what isn't scaleable as it requires deeper and deeper layers of bureaucracy the more it grows.
I recognize democracy (particularly democracy as we have it) sucks, and I do recognize you aren't disagreeing with me about how we can't take rights away. I just don't like the idea of using the flaws of democracy as an excuse to take rights away from people. That is and was the strategy of fascists, authoritarians, and bigots.
And I do believe being careful who we quote is important because "separating art from the artist" is a flawed and problematic rule. The only way you can separate "art" from the "artist" is by removing it from context, and that is a dangerous thing to do. For example if I wanted to make an anti-war point I wouldn't use this quote,
"Sir, it is true that republics have often been cradled in war, but more often they have met with a grave in that cradle. Peace is the interest, the policy, the nature of a popular Government. War may bring benefits to a few, but privation and loss are the lot of the many. An appeal to arms should be the last resort, and only by national rights or national honor can it be justified."
That is because this is a quote from Jefferson Davis. In the end my point is its probably not the right move to use a quote from a racist (Churchill) in response to a comment about how voter restriction is used by racists and bigots
Or you could juat make it so no one has the right to govern others. Then you wouldn't have to take people's rights away just cause they have beliefs different than yours, like you are suggesting. A problem in this world is people only seem to think about taking things away and punishing people to solve a problem, which doesn't work.
Everyone deserves the right to have power over themselves and things that affect them personally, no one deserves the right over others. Thats the issue. We insist on using methods of organization where there are those that govern and those to be governed.
Also maybe Churchill isn't the best person to be paraphrasing in this context considering how imperialistic and racist he was.
The reason why I put Palestine over Ukraine is because Palestine is a genocide right now, while Ukraine isn't. Ukraine is two capitalist states fighting.
I do still also think working for a defense contractor like Lockheed is wrong as working for them is far more direct of a hand in death than most other jobs. And I wouldn't say they are immoral, they are chasing money (which in of itself is immoral) and chose to do it through profitting off of war. They may do good sometimes but it is not out of the goodness of their hearts, its to profit off of killing each other. And just as I do with elections, if the game is pick a lesser evil I will not play.
And with the McDonald's et al yeah I wouldn't shame those working there, I lost track of my point. Was just trying to say I take action to oppose them, just like I would with Lockheed if I could (I don't live near one and I cant buy their stuff to begin with lol).
I won't deny its more complicated than I gave it credit for, but I think Lockheed is indefensible of a corporation. Working for them is a deal with the devil. There are reasons why I wouldn't shame someone for working there, but they are exceptions and not the rule.