Sometimes it's just fun to see how ideas do or do not mesh -- even if said ideas may differ a little from how various people interpret them in an exegetical sense.

So an act's being moral is hidden, private - and hence irrelevant. Between you and your maker, I suppose. — Banno

I don't think I'd go so far as to say that its being hidden makes intent irrelevant. Though between you and your maker I believe is the inspiration behind such thinking, there is also an aspect to this which makes one question themselves and ask what it is they are really acting from. Did I do this out of love for someone, or did I do it out of respect for some rule, or did I do it because I thought it might benefit me? These aren't all necessarily exclusive of one another, but the intent behind an act is important to deciding if I'm coming from the right place or not -- and thus whether or not I should continue acting in such-and-such a manner (if I happen to believe that such-and-such is subject to moral deliberation, at least)

The private rule is that one ought act with moral intent. But could you even know if you had done so? Perhaps your memory is mistaken, and you did not intend to act morally, at the time, even though it now appears to you that your intent was moral.

This happens. We justify our actions post hoc.

And if this were so, we could never know if our actions were moral.

This line of thinking made me think in three different directions.

In one direction I would say that self-knowledge is in some respect different from knowledge of the world. I am not an object in the world, after all, and though I can certainly be wrong about myself -- and I agree with you that we do come up with post hoc justifications all the time -- the same sort of scenario can be brought up with respect to knowledge of the world. Perhaps we can have self-knowledge, but just as with knowledge of the world, that knowledge lacks certainty or has certainty coming in degrees or in different respects.

In the other direction my thought is that sometimes we do know others very well -- sometimes so well that we know others, at least in certain respects, better than they know themselves. Think of the knowledge a parent has of a child. The relationship is so intimate and long-term that the parent comes to know the child's intents. They can, of course, be wrong about this. And I'd say that the way they come to know these things differs from the way we come to know about ourselves. But the upshot here is that this sort of knowledge is not a knowledge of rules, but of intents and desires.

And, lastly, another line of thought was that perhaps we do not know our actions are moral after all -- at least in a theoretical sense. In a practical sense we can know, and this sort of knowledge is the knowledge of doing. But it's not the same as both being righteous and knowing one is righteous -- so it may actually be appropriate to say we never know that our actions are moral, though we do ponder it, interrogate ourselves, think about our intents, and do the best we can.



I recognize that all three of these thoughts are not necessarily compatible. I just shared them all because I couldn't really decide which course of thought was best.

Well, especially in regards to rule-following and existentialism Kant seems like a great touchstone. As I read him, though his purposes were clearly different from the existentialists, he kind of lays a foundation for existential thought. This is because freedom is such a central value to his ethics. In a way, if we take him at face value as saying that the categorical imperative says the very same thing in each iteration, his only criteria for whether a rule is moral is

1) Does it wind up contradicting itself if every moral actor follows it? If no then go to 2 --

2) Are you motivated strictly from a sense of respect for the moral law when you act on such and such a principle? If yes then moral, if no then at least legal but not moral.


which allows for a greater range of actions than a lot of moral systems before Kant.

Now where Nietzsche differs is probably on the emphasis on 1 -- the possibility for universality isn't as important to Nietzsche. But what Kant did is articulate a way of ethical thinking that allowed an individual to act on their own conscience in spite of whatever surroundings they may find themselves in -- so your society may believe that such and such is good, but as long as you believe otherwise and you are acting out of respect for the moral law and everyone could theoretically adopt your rule then your action is moral.

In other words he articulates a way for moral rules to be private in a particular sense -- if not quite in the sense I take the private language argument to mean when it describes a private language.

What's really interesting about Kant's rules is that what makes them moral is not the rule, though the rule must actually pass some formal criteria, but the motivation behind an actor's act. So we can have several persons who are following the same rule, are acting in the same way, but only the person who knows in their heart of hearts that they are doing it out of respect would know that their action is moral (at least if they are Kantian, of course).

Hence why this all opens up thinking, or perhaps serves more as a propaedeutic, to existential ethics -- it's about one's relationship to a rule, and its motivation, and largely excludes our social milieu. Nietzsche just takes this line of thinking further, absent its reliance on theological underpinnings (which are pretty obvious whenever we read Kant, even if his formal theory does not rely upon theology).


So this gets back around to, in my mind, on just what we mean by private or public -- because a private rule by Kant is still, in principle, articulatable (oi, I butcher the language so), even if it is not shared. And though it be articulatable we can have no behavioristic criteria for determining if an act is moral, though we can check if it follows the rule.

(a few edits for clarity)

The arguments against a private language have a more general form that argues against private rules. A rule that is only understood by one person does not count as a rule.

So can a person have private morals?

Morals are rules to live by; but if rules cannot be private, morality cannot be private.

So could Nietzsche follow a rule that was understood only by himself?

This, by way of attracting attention to a discussion between ↪Janus and myself.

Now my guess is that this will become a discussion of the merits of the private language argument well before the end of the first page. That's not the point. Rather, if the private language argument is correct, is it compatible with an existential approach to morality? — Banno

My inclination is to say "yes" -- but with a hasty addition that if all we end up doing is the same, but with different words, then it's really hard to tell the difference between existential ethics from traditional ethics. So while I am inclined to say "yes", especially because the burden is just asking about possibility so it seems likely we could come up with some scenario where this all makes sense, it might also be the case that we're missing the point if we're formulating ethics in terms of traditional morality. ((I'm tempted to go on a tangent about Kant here))

But, as I understand it at least, I don't know if it is possible for Nietzsche to understand a rule all on his own -- if it's a rule then he is formulating it in a language. So if he understands it all on his own then it must be some trans-linguistic understanding.

What's interesting here, at least for me, is not the exegesis so much as the notion of someone who has no interest in right and wrong. What might that look like? — Banno

I sort of wonder at the thought of someone who has no interest in right and wrong. To put it bluntly anyone who has an articulated opinion such that they are beyond good and evil or that they are nihilists sort of betrays in that act that they are more interested in right and wrong than most people are.

So I wonder if you mean someone who has reflected upon these issues and come to such a conclusion, or if you mean a sort of person who simply is the ubermensch?

One interesting thought Nietzsche put forward in criticizing himself, -- which he often does -- was that Jesus was such a man because he broke the tablet of values before him and reforged the image of goodness for everyone.

I suppose, in the end, my feelings don't run too deep on this so I'd be willing to give it a shot in spite of my prediction and see what actually happened.

Cool. I was hoping to demonstrate how one might use a knowledge of fallacies by placing them into argumentative form rather than list form :).

That's a sound counter-point though, hard to know if it's gonna go down that road, but.... isn't that a slippery slope? — Christoffer

On the contrary -- if it were a slippery slope I would be substituting what the proposal is for some other proposal. So something along the lines of "If we post a list of tips, then this is just one step on the road to making them rules, which is surely just a way for the socialists to take over the forum"

Which is basically a non-sequiter, and is fallacious because I am not addressing what a person said but rather what I would rather talk about -- usually because it is easier to dismiss or scarier to the audience I wish to influence.

But I believe that a list of tips wouldn't encourage the good, but would rather encourage the bad. Perhaps my prediction is wrong, but I am addressing the proposal put forward. I don't believe you are saying these should be rules, nor do I believe that it will eventually lead to socialism.

All fallacies are originally derived from argument. One of the dangers of learning a list of fallacies is that you miss out on the ability to identify why they are fallacies in the first place -- it's a common sophomoric mistake to dismiss arguments by quickly categorizing them into their respective domains of invalid inference.

The names are better served for self-criticism than as a list of do's and don'ts for others. Especially because most fallacies are of the informal variety, anyways, and so whether or not they apply is a matter of judgment to the particular argument rather than a solid proof of invalidity.

Which is to say -- I don't think it would change our penchant for making mistakes in thinking to have a list pinned up. I think all it would accomplish would be to endorse the bad use of fallacies. So I voted no.

I don't know if I'd say it's possible to empathize with people in the abstract -- so you use categories like the homeless, and I would say that we are not empathizing at all if we are claiming to empathize with such a category of persons. Empathy occurs between persons in a face-to-face relationship, not between a person and an abstract category of persons.

I think I agree with you this far @Judaka -- only that I'd say people claiming empathy for a category are a little confused on what empathy is, though perhaps that's not what you're wanting to focus on.

What I would ask of your belief is -- if empathy is bad at understanding people, is there anything good at understanding people? And if so, what is it?

That actually sounds pretty cool. Maybe you'll have to share it sometime.

Where do you find it or what examples do you have in mind? Perhaps in the Spanish or Russian Civil war? Likely the ideology was championed by those who were communists, but were also against the totalitarianism of the typical Marxist-Leninism? In both cases, the anarcho-communist groups were destroyed. — ssu

Hey! You do know some examples. Good for you. Those aren't exhaustive, but they are enough to prove my point

Them having been destroyed doesn't mean that they never were. Nor that it didn't continue on elsewhere.

In fact you might recall that some of those who did the destroying were of the authoritarian variety of communism. Seems to me that if people are willing to kill or die over a difference it's a difference that makes a difference.

And that's really all I've been saying here -- that there is a difference between them. I really have no interest in convincing you of the virtues of anarchy, though they are plentiful. Politics doesn't really work by way of argument, so I don't see that as being fruitful at all. It's not like I haven't heard what you are saying before.

Ah, ok. That makes sense now. I had a couple different thoughts so I wasn't quite sure which you were responding to.

I'm afraid I'm uncertain where this is coming from. I mean, someone could, and people do think of morality in a broader way than that -- I agree. But I'm feeling dense at the moment.

Now, why say "just" whatever we happen to feel is right? Is that supposed to indicate that it's trivial or that there's a credible alternative or both? — S

It's to indicate that there is nothing else besides whatever we happen to feel is right. In comparison I might say that moral statements are whatever we happen to feel is right, and they are also truth-functional statements which make a claim about a fact.

Because I would argue that there's no credible alternative in light of the logical consequences of these proposed alternatives. And I'd also argue that moral judgement isn't trivial.

And why non-cognitivism here?

If moral judgment is based in feeling, and there is no fact to the matter, and you don't believe that all moral statements are false then it seems to me that leaves you with either this notion of subjective truth that you're talking about, or simply stating that moral statements are not truth-functional, in spite of their surface grammar.

And I can't make heads or tails out of the notion of a subjective truth so non-cognitivism is about where I land in making sense of your view.

That's true.

And there is something to be said for that approach too, I think. Something that's been niggling at the back of my mind in thinking through all this is that another approach that hasn't been mentioned is to say that debating the truth or falsity of this or that statement or theory misses the point entirely -- that we are the ones who have to make these decisions regardless of whether such and such is true or false.

And that seems to open the door to existential ethics.

Though, for myself at least, I don't think I am the sort of person who could fully commit to a will-to-power ethos. It's quite lonely, and seems to make some people masters while others are slaves (to morality, but thereby making them useful to the masters) -- and that just seems like a sad life to me. (not that all existential ethics are like the Will to Power -- heck, even Nietzsche doesn't always agree with himself here, I think.)

I probably do have it wrong. But in trying to pin down what your getting at I just couldn't see what exactly was true about the moral statements anymore. It seemed like the statements were truth-functional, as you admit, but then they had a different kind of truth -- a subjective truth. So that "P" is true in F, where "P" refers to some moral statement and F refers to some frame of reference, usually the moral actor.

But I am unable to differentiate this from the notion that moral statements are just whatever we happen to feel is right -- which seems to me to fall squarely in with non-cognitivism.

So I just feel confused in trying to parse your account, I guess.

I think I got a much better handle on what @Terrapin Station believes -- and I thought that we might start delving into mind and stuff so I didn't want to pollute the thread this spun from with all that speculation. And I think I understand where I disagree -- without some way of building from the relating of the mind to the frequent success of language I think I have to opt for some other theory, even if it is somewhat speculative and metaphysical.

I got to make clearer some of my thoughts on meaning.

And I think this grammar is interesting that you provided:

Having said that, there are some interesting aspects of the grammar of moral language that can be cleaned up. Moral statements have a direction of fit that distinguishes them from some other sorts of statements; they are unlike mere statements of preference, in that they set out what others should do, not just what the speaker should do; and they have their import in providing justification for what we do. — Banno

(switching topics here, thinking of @andrewk)Something about saying moral statements are meant to influence others doesn't quite sit right with me -- not that I'm unfamiliar with the phenomena. Of course people say these things to influence others. But it seems that we say things we believe are right or wrong not to influence others -- at least when thinking about what is the right thing to do -- but because it is the right thing to do.

I'm not sure how to put it, though, without sounding like I'm basically just running in a circle.

Yup, definitely.

I want to get back around to the open question argument again. But I wanted to revisit my Casebeer first and see if I thought differently about him than I do now before saying much. He takes on the open question argument in arguing for natural ethical facts, but I remember not feeling convinced by it.

That seems more coherent to my eyes. But your account differs from @S or @Michael -- who seem to want to say they are subjectively true.

I suppose I can't get over the notion that the subjectivist accounts wants to claim that such and such statements are true subjectively.

The way I parse that is to say that the subjectivist thinks that all moral statements are in some way reducible to or are really saying something other than what they are saying on their surface. So that

(1) "Kicking the pup is wrong" is true

is reducible to or is actually saying

(2) "I feel that kicking the pup is wrong" is true


But these sentences do not mean the same thing. One is referring to the action "Kicking", and the other is referring to the speaker's state of mind or attitude towards the action.


We can set up some rules around subjective truth, I suppose, but then it seems to me that we're not talking about truth anymore. Truth is a property of statements. And (1) does not mean the same thing as (2). I could say that if a speaker says (1) then (2), but I could not say that the truth value of (1) is the same as the truth value of (2).

In the case where someone says, just to make it easier to see, that kicking the pup is right for instance -- (1) would be false, yet (2) would be true.

Alright. Then the two are still not opposed.

If I say "The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 m/s" then that implies that I believe said statement. The statement is made true by objective features of the world, but my belief is a subjective attitude towards said statement.

If objectivism is the thesis that moral statements are true then I'd say that Richard Brandt's notion of subjectivism is not exclusive of objectivism -- and so the two are not really opposed.

Because, after all, we can assert true statements -- and the statements we choose to assert often do imply some kind of specific attitude we have towards something. Especially so with moral matters, where anger and respect are very frequent emotions.

Reason is a skill that can be taught. But it is a skill precisely because we are all unreasonable. It's an ideal that we can aspire to and follow, but we can never just be reasonable -- even to get by in our day-to-day lives we must rely upon heuristics and fallacious reasoning, things which we have developed on the basis of how it satisfies our needs and desires rather than on the basis that it satisfies the criterions of reason.

That's why science and philosophy are hard to do. We are intentionally breaking our habits to obtain a different outcome.

Great. Now that we have the perspective of a liberal capitalist on Leninism -- a thing I definitely think is worth noting if we want to gain a perspective on some political position, and increase our understanding -- can you address the part where I said that in addition to criticisms and barbs from opponents one must also look at what people who self-identify as this or that political group say for themselves?

Right now you're kind of just going on a tirade against something you dislike. All well and good. But your disliking it doesn't really change the history of there being two kinds of communism, one of which is libertarian communism.

Yes, anarcho-communism is a contradiction for me, it feels like communism is slapped onto anarchy in order to not frame it as pure anarchy, but it makes little sense — Christoffer

Oh, no! That's not the point at all. It's to differentiate itself from Bolshevism or other forms of authoritarian communism, not to save anarchy. Anarchy doesn't have a pure form, really. And anarchists don't believe anarchy needs saving -- they like anarchy! :D

As one might expect of a group of people who don't submit to any authority anarchists have developed many, many strands and thoughts on the subject. About the only unifying theme seems to be a commitment to the abolishment of all hierarchies out of a belief that the root cause of social evils stems from said hierarchies.

I get the desire to clarify anarchy as not some sort of Mad Max scenario. I'm just trying to point out that anarchy has many forms, and one such form is anarcho-communism -- and, as I see it at least, the two basically predicate one another, but there's a difference between how one organizes and who owns what.

Though that kind of gets at the difference between what your chart says and what the political compass chart says.

I am too nihilistic to believe that a pure anarchy society can function in any way. It will most likely become an Ayn Rand nightmare. But it also has its roots in the sociological and psychological observations that groups of 12 are the maximum in which people can behave as a functional anarchy system, beyond that people start grouping together, form tribalism and if there is no over-arching authority someone will start calling the shots, demanding things from the other groups etc.

I think that sub-definitions of political forms doesn't really change the over-arching map. A scale of authority to liberal, collectivism to individualism is the most basic map we can define by and within it, we get those corners which makes sense according to the first scales. Central economy and capitalism forms naturally under them and slapping together different parts trying to create some combination are usually why they never work and become failed sub-category political movements. It's the "eat the cake and have it too" of politics. The only way to do that is to embrace Objectivism and take the cake, eat it and by gunpoint demand that the one who owned it makes more. — Christoffer

I don't think our charts and conceptualizations are as important as attending to the history of political movements. We can, after all, come up with some sort of theoretical concept that does not fit the world. Further I don't think that our personal incredulity about such and such an idea should guide our explorations very much, especially with respect to politics. The political systems we inhabit in our life -- whatever they may be -- have a vested interest in influencing our feelings on plausibility. This would be true in an anarchist society as much as it is true under liberal capitalism. if people have similar feelings of plausibility on what is possible for themselves then that increases group cohesion and stability, and a society which does that is more likely to propogate than a society which does not do that.

So if we want to understand the lay of the land like a political scientist or historian or philosopher then we have to put aside our immediate feelings of plausibility and read not just what people say of others, or what a theoretical frame might say, but also what people say of themselves as well as the actual history in practical institutions of said ideas -- because it is never the case that the actually-existing-institution matches the idea.

This isn't to say that there is a theory-neutral place from which we can actually lay out some kind of uber-map of all maps. There is not. But we can improve our understanding, in spite of that.

And Lenin would say of your freedom that it is a bourgeois freedom, and not freedom proper -- that only the dictatorship of the proletariat as enacted by a vanguard revolutionary party in the interests of the working class can found a free society.

But if we adopt a more historical perspective we'll see that pretty much every political theorist throws criticisms and barbs at their opponents -- and while these can be insightful, it is also insightful to see what people have to say for themselves. And anarcho-communism, or libertarian communism, or Eurocommunism, or anarcho-syndicalism -- as in, the people who describe themselves in these terms -- say different things than you do about themselves.

True, but in anarchy, you are free to claim anything for yourself, but if you don't support the community you will be left alone and if you force yourself onto the community, they will bond together to get rid of you. — Christoffer

I disagree that you are free to claim anything -- in particular I highlighted land, labor, and capital. There is also often a notion of personal property, the sorts of things that one might own at home, vs. private property which is contrasted to public property. If someone personally owns a journal then you can't claim their personal property -- that's theirs.

What enforces this? The community does, as you said. But the community is not a state. According to anarchy the problem with the state is one of hierarchy -- where, with a state, there will always be rulers (of some sort), and thereby there will be the more important and the less important; the more powerful and the less powerful.

It's in the word itself -- an-archy. Against rulers, chiefs, kings, presidents, bosses, heads of household, or senators.

But, then, how does one enforce the community rules if they are violated? Does that not establish a kind of hierarchy? Not if everyone is involved in the decision-making process. Or, so one strand of anarchic thinking believes.

Communism requires a state and authority, — Christoffer

That depends on what you believe people will be like without a state.

Perhaps you might say that a criticism against anarcho-communism is that communism requires a state, and so the anarcho-communist is committed to a practical, if not theoretical, contradiction. I think much the same thing about anarcho-capitalists.

But from a historical perspective these two strands of thinking really have rich histories of their own.

Depends on how you count "everywhere it was tried", and also what counts as totalitarianism for that matter. Libertarian communism has a rich history of its own. It's its own separate political line of thinking.

Or, of course, Lenin could just be referring to some non-existent trend in communism to ward against what may theoretically come to pass according to some theorists. :P -- I linked the two thinkers to demonstrate my meaning in a descriptive sense. It has both supporters and detractors, and has influenced institutional organization.

You have the authoritarian-liberal scale and the collective-individualism scale on there.
What other scale of liberty are you referring to? You are either totally free or you are free in a community-form. — Christoffer

Ah, perhaps I'm mistaking your chart for the political compass chart because of their superficial similarity.

But he is essentially describing anarchy. I think there are lots of people who miss that anarchy isn't "Mad Max", it's just a society in which everyone exists as a collective without authority given to anyone specific. — Christoffer

He is describing a particular kind of anarchy, but anarchy is multifarious. There are even, though they are (in my estimation) confused, anarcho-capitalists.

I understand that anarchy is not like Mad Max.

And if people want freedom on such an individual level that no state exists, you end up down in objectivism and Ayn Rand — Christoffer

I disagree with you here. Without a state, even a minimal state, to back up private property claims you do not have private property. You may have warlords or gangsters, but you don't have a court system to enforce contracts over private property.

I think you're confusing two different strands of communism and trying to fuse them together into one theory. But as your own political chart admirably shows, there is an economic and an organizational dimension which is both independent of one another.

I think you are confusing liberty with individual liberty -- as if this were the only thing under consideration. It's important to anarcho-communism, or libertarian communism, but not the whole story.

Kropotkin is a pretty typical thinker when it comes to understanding anarcho-communism. Lenin is a typical thinker when it comes to understanding the communism you are referring to.


Anarchy and communism go hand in hand, from my perspective, so there is no need to distinguish between the two except for the fact that there are different dimensions to political description -- one with respect to organization, and the other with respect to economy.

And, anarchy -- as one might predict given even just a general notion of anarchy -- has so many strands within it that it sort of just doesn't fit on the chart very well when taken as a whole. Anarcho-communism fits nicely, but there's, like, a lot of different strands of anarchy.

It'd probably for the better.

But who knows? Perhaps we assign too much to philosophical backing. Epicureanism was a popular philosophy in Roman times, for instance. I have read, though I'm uncertain of the evidence, that Cassius -- of Caesar killing fame -- was an Epicurean. So they did, in fact, engage in the world of politics and pain in spite of some Epicurean training.

Sort of like how many Christians engaged in warfare for land, gold, and power in spite of the fairly obvious message that such isn't exactly what Christ said was for the better.

But I will say that the Epicurean message makes more sense to me than the Christian one.

It's in the bottom-left corner.

I think that I know. However, what I think I know does not always match up to conventional understanding/notions. I asked not to be intentionally obtuse, but rather to perhaps seque into reasoning that leads us to scrutinize the conventional notion of moral statement. — creativesoul

I'd invite you to present some reasoning, if you wish. If it sparks a comment or thought in me then I'll share. But I'm failing to see where you're going with this.

I don't understand the bit about unchanging belief... — creativesoul

I just mean that the following conditional is false:

If I believe that "kicking puppies is wrong" is true then "kicking puppies is wrong" is true

"Kicking puppies is wrong" may be true, but my belief, or lack thereof, in said statement does not change its truth-value.

Moralizing is thinking about one's own thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. — creativesoul

This seems to cloistered in one's own thoughts, to me. When we moralize we are addressing others. When Ted moralizes on the evils of adultery, he is not talking about his beliefs, he is talking about adultery.

A point I use because we can often moralize about what I don't think is within the domain of morality. You can rationalize why adultery is wrong by making some notion about promises, but to me it just doesn't come on the same level as, say, ensuring the hungry are fed or preventing murder.

But even when we moralize about what I believe is not morally significant, we're talking about actions, dispositions, or character -- not our own beliefs.

I find the private-language argument to be pretty convincing. While I grant that we all have our own subjective realities that we do not share in the same way as we share, say, money or chairs I don't think that language is a part of that reality. In fact I'd say that language forms the bridge between our own interiors to one another -- and its public nature is what allows us to do that.

Further, while I grant subjectivity, I also think there's also similarity in our subjectivity. How do I know? Because when someone relates to me their experience I can feel that experience based upon what I've felt before -- I can feel someone else's pain, I can relate my life to another's. They are not identical, but similar. This relating happens a great deal of the time, too -- so while it is important to recognize we are different, I think it's also important to recognize our similarities too.

It's in this way that we might be able to argue that morality is a factual, if not empirical, matter. But the more I think of it the more I think that we would be abandoning naturalism in so saying -- which may be just too much for some to go along with.

Do you not know what counts as a moral statement? I'm hesitant to put necessary and sufficient conditions to the notion. It seems to me that it's not hard to discriminate between moralizing and statements of preference.

Some aspects seem to include claims to universality across all responsible moral actors, the notion that one's belief does not change whether something is good or evil, and that the subject matter is of particular import to living life.

If someone were to come to me, in some hypothetical scenario, and tell me that what I'm seeing is not green, but red, I'd tell them that what I am seeing is green even if the nanometers of the wavelength of light happened to roughly correspond to what most people call red.

Sure. After all, it's just a way of arranging theoretical stances. You could graph anything, though. Even quantitative features, like GDP, infant mortality, or life expectancy in addition to the more qualitative notions viewed on a spectrum.

Yeah, pretty much. Just a different way of saying the same thing.

The two aren't opposed.

Anarchy is against hierarchy of any kind. Communism is an economic model where ownership over land, capital, and labor is somehow collective rather than individual. The two complement one another because collective ownership levels hierarchies on the economic field -- and without a state to enforce individual property rights over land, capital, and labor you naturally obtain communism, ignoring the problem of warlords and gangsters that others have already mentioned.