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TimS comments on How to deal with non-realism? - Less Wrong
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Or they thought they were doing what was best to achieve a better society in the future. Everyone is the hero of their own story.
I fail to see how this is supposed to contradict what I said.
The Soviet Union believed it was implementing a morality based on scientifically objective economic facts. That's moral realism, not anti-realism. That the USSR was a tyranny and did terrible things isn't inconsistent with their belief that they were doing what was objectively right.
Specifically, they believed that the objective fact was that morality was not objective but something bourgeois used to oppress the proletariat.
Sure, they believed that the bourgeois value system functioned to maintain the bourgeois status quo (isn't that true?). But you seem to be saying that disagreeing with the bourgeois value system is a moral anti-realist position. There's nothing in the definition of moral realism that says particular moral realists must agree about what is right.
Suppose someone said Islam isn't a religion because Muslims say Christianity is a false religion. That's a misleading usage of the word "religion." It's just a clearer usage of "religion" to say that Islam and Christianity are religions with conflicting tenets. Likewise, bourgeois ideology and communist ideology are both value systems that assert they are reflections of the correct moral facts, and they clearly disagree on the content of moral facts.
They believed that the concept of morality itself was merely a tool of oppressors, or at best merely a tool that they might as well turn against the bourgeois.
Inside view vs. outside view.
Wait, which of us do you think is describing which view?
I think I'm describing inside view and you're describing some kind of partial outside view.
Yes, you are proffering the inside view, and I am proffering the outside view.
Let x = the circumstance one finds oneself in, and let y = the choice one makes. Define f() as the function that converts x into y. By definition y = f(x). I think that "morality" is just the label we apply to a particular person or group's f().
It is clearly true the BOURGEOIS(x) != COMMUNIST(x). But your position seems to be that COMMUNIST() cannot be labeled the "Communist morality" because they used the word "morality" exclusively to refer to BOURGEOIS() or FEUDALISM() (or whatever).
I'm not primarily interested in that assertion - instead, I'm asserting that Communists believed the function COMMUNIST() was validated by objective facts, external to any particular human mind. Likewise, I might assert that the Pope thinks CATHOLIC() is validated by objective facts, external to any particular human mind.
Isn't there only one status quo, and don't all mainstream value systems function to maintain it? For better or worse.
It is true that there is (at most) one status quo at a time. Further, I would expect the dominant morality of a particular moment to support the status quo, but that doesn't imply that only one moral system is believed at any particular time.
I don't know what you mean by asserting that there is only one status quo - it seems false. The status quo in France in 1788 wasn't the same as the status quo in France in 1791.
Further, there's nothing inherent in the concept of a morality that requires it agree that the current state of affairs is best. Mencius Moldbug has a morality, and he thinks the way western nations run their affairs is filled with nonsense.
Sure, one status quo at a time. But you didn't label you didn't label "status quo" with a time period, you labeled it with "bourgeois."