Nothing.
That is what Bioshock has to say about Ayn Rand or Objectivism.
Absolutely nothing.
Bioshock is one of the most popular games to be released in the last two decades, so popular that it still has a thriving fanbase and a fourth entry in the series is in development. It is lauded as one of the best games published and a “masterpiece” that definitively proved that video games can be true works of art. And I would have to agree. I remember the first time I played it. I was staying the night at a friend’s house and he had just purchased it. I started playing around 7 or 8 PM. my buddy finally crashed around 1 AM. I kept playing. And I was still playing when he woke up at 11 AM. The game was enthralling then and it is so now. Even a decade later I can confidently say that it is one of the best games I’ve ever played and still one of my favorite games ever. Which is what makes the its absolute failure as a critique of Objectivism and Randian ideals so glaring and disappointing.
Now, I know what you’re already thinking. There are scores of websites (and even academic papers) which will delight in explaining to you all the ways that Bioshock is an intricate dissection of Ayn Rand’s philosophy Objectivism and why it is a harebrained utopian dream that would never work in reality – which is why Rapture, the city all the events of the game occur inside of – is an apocalyptic hellscape haunted by humans turned into monsters by greed, addiction, and unregulated science.
The problem with all these articles (and the many more like them)?
They have no clue what they’re talking about.
This is a common problem in the online politically Leftist community – they love to denounce Ayn Rand and Objectivism but have no idea what Rand believed or what the ideals of Objectivism are. This results in thousands (and thousands!) of the article writers, thread posters, and commenters saying absolutely stupid stuff that they would know is obvious incorrect if they had bothered to read something by Rand or an Objectivist to get even the most basic beliefs and ideals correct. And, unfortunately, Bioshock the game does the exact same thing.
It is well and good that Ken Levine, the creative director behind Bioshock, thinks his critique applies equally to all utopian projects, and not just Objectivism. The problem is that he never actually critiques Objectivism. At no time in the story, neither in the direct gameplay of the character nor in the background stories of the non-player characters (NPCs) are any of them Objectivists. That Levine thinks what he is critiquing is Objectivism is a product of him having no idea about Objectivism’s ideals are. This becomes glaringly obvious when one bothers to learn even the basic concepts of the Objectivist philosophy and compare them to the character in Bioshock.
What Is Objectivism?
First, in order to determine that Bioshock doesn’t ever actually address Objectivism we have to determine what Objectivism is and the basics of what it believes. If you want the full explanation you can read John Galt’s seventy page monologue in Atlas Shrugged and it’ll explain very clearly what Objectivists believe just in case you didn’t intuit it from the previous thousand pages, though this article is a bit shorter. Here I will endeavor to explain the basics essential values of Objectivism: Reality, Reason, Self-Interest, and Capitalism. The following brief explanations come from this introduction to objectivism.
Reality: Rand was not concerned with metaphysics and largely disdained religion. She asserted that the Universe, as it is able to be understood through the application of human study and intelligence, is real. Humans may misunderstand something, but a thing is whatever it is and has the attributes it has – it is not what others can imagine, wish, or dream it should be. Material existence is what it is as discovered through the scientific application of human intelligence.
Reason: Because things are what they truly are this means that the application of human intelligence can determine objective facts about the Universe. The way this is accomplished is through reason- using logical, “clear, well-defined concepts, avoiding contradictions anywhere in one’s ideas, and not basing one’s conclusions on sheer emotion or intuition. Using reason means going by the perceived facts and evidence in all matters of external reality, and the best facts and evidence one can get through honest introspection, in matters of the state of one’s own consciousness.”
Self-Interest: Because humans exist with the ability to use reason and therefore choose how they will think and act in a way that no other creature on Earth does, humans also have the ability to analyze reality and use logic to determine what is in there own self-interest and live accordingly. No other being or group of beings can determine better how a person should live than the individual in question. Each human being is an end unto him or herself, there is no greater good than what is good for the individual as collectives are really just individuals grouped together in the most superficial and meaningless ways. At the core of every group – racial, religious, sex, etc. – is an individual that never fits within the confines of the collective. As a reuslt the only thing that matters, the only true good, is the individual person.
This is often where people get hung up on Rand, especially as she (being a bit of a mid-20th century edgelord) variously calls this ” the virtue of selfishness,” “rational selfishness,” “egoism,” and “rational egoism.” The best description I have heard for it is “rational self-interest.” People hear that the greatest moral goal in society is the individual pursuing that which makes he or she happiest according to her own reasoned understanding of the world and automatically think that Rand promoted people doing whatever toxic or harmful behaviors they can imagine as long as it makes the person doing them happy. For example. But, as Rand noted, this reaction has less to do with what she actually taught and more to do with the true corrupt nature of the person making that argument:
When one speaks of man’s right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to sacrifice others. Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that to injure, enslave, rob or murder others is in man’s self-interest—which he must selflessly renounce. The idea that man’s self-interest can be served only by a non-sacrificial relationship with others has never occurred to those humanitarian apostles of unselfishness, who proclaim their desire to achieve the brotherhood of men. And it will not occur to them, or to anyone, so long as the concept ‘rational’ is omitted from the context of ‘values,’ ‘desires,’ ‘self-interest’ and ethics.”
The Virtue of Selfishness, pgs. 25-26
Rational human beings recognize that there is far more to be gained from cooperating with one another and trading value for value, in exchanging goods and services to mutual benefit than there is in setting up a social system of moral cannibalism that teaches people that the only way they can succeed is by attacking others and taking their wealth by force. This leads to the fourth primary Objectivist value.
Capitalism: In describing how Objectivist view and interact with others, Rand taught:
The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.
The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice.
A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange—an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others.
The Virtue of Selfishness, pg. 26
The previous quote is, essentially, a description of free market capitalism, which Rand taught was the best social system for free men and women to achieve their highest good through rational self-interest. Far from sacrificing others, far from robbing people and taking their things or using the power of government to regulate and control what people thought and how they lived, an Objectivist embraces the role of all people as equals who are perusing happiness and treats them as such. To depart from this would be to build a system of control and domination that would eventually cause chaos, violence, poverty, and destruction. The greater control the government exercised over society the more it suffered loss of life, liberty, property, and joy with totalitarian governments meaning the total loss of humanity and life and ultimately the total collapse of society as Rand had seen before escaping the Soviet Union. Therefore, the only just government according to an Objectivist is one that protects the life, liberty, and property of the individual and never interferes with his or her ability to engage in free trade with whomsoever he or she pleases wherever he or she may be.
In other words, the reaosn that an Objectivist doesn’t going around murdering, stealing, raping, and murdering people is because he or she recognizes that not only is this evil because it violates the rights of others but that it is also stupid and in fact makes the Objectivist poorer in the long run by destroying he wealth and systems of production that makes the things the Objectivist wants or needs but which he or she could never make his or her self.
With an understanding of these basic morals and ideals of Objectivism in place we are now ready to evaluate the places, events, and people of Bioshock to see how they compare and contrast with Objectivism.
Galt’s Gulch vs. Rapture
I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose… Rapture.
-Andrew Ryan
Rapture is the gorgeous Art Deco underwater dystopia that most of the events of Bioshock takes place within. Built to look like the greatest city that has never existed, Rapture is designed to be a secret enclave of artists, scientists, inventors, and other geniuses where they can work without the restrictions placed upon them in the nations above water. Thanks to its isolation undersea the governments of the world know nothing about it and therefore do nothing to stop it. For a decade it thrives before falling into a civil war between the forces of Andrew Ryan and the mysterious revolutionary known only as Atlas. By the time the player character arrives, at the tail end of the war when everything and everyone has descended into collapse and madness, all that is left of Rapture are the beautiful ruins of a once awe-inspiring place.
It seems to be a commonly accepted belief that Rapture is based on Galt’s Gulch from Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. For example, Dr. Joseph Packer (who now holds the position of Communication and Dramatic Arts at Central Michigan University) writes:
John Galt, who was initially believed only to exist as a myth, created Galt’ s Gulch as a refuge for America’s productive citizens while they went ‘on strike’. If anything is afoul in Galt’s Gulch it is never brought to the readers’ attention. The refuge is a model of productivity, where everyone lives peacefully and happily, without the interference of the state. Rand even titles the section that introduces the reader to Galt’s Gulch: ‘The Utopia of Greed’ (Rand 1992: 689). The word utopia indicates that Galt’s Gulch is the ultimate ideal for which humanity should strive. Levin’s vision of Rapture, the city in Bioshock, is founded on the same objectivist principles as Galt’s Gulch, with radically different results.
The Battle for Galt’s Gulch: Bioshock as Critique of Objectivism, pg. 213
The problem with this comparison is that other than both Galt’s Gulch and Rapture being isolated settlements there are no other similarities between them in any manner whatsoever.
Galt’s Gulch
First and foremost, Galt’s Gulch was never meant to be a permanent settlement. It was always designed to be a temporary settlement that lasted a few years and which would allow those living there to coexist peacefully and productively until the time came that they would return to the world at large. It was not Rand’s vision of what a perfect society would look like because it wasn’t society as a whole, but only a select few hidden away temporarily. It is certainly true that it had elements of what she thought a better society would look like, but it would never run into the problem of natural resources and long term provision because it was never meant to be long term. Ayn Rand’s view of a true Objectivist community would be one that was completely connected to the rest of the world in every single way and isolated in no way in order for it to engage in free trade with everyone else in the world.
Secondly, there were never any rules about people being compelled to stay in Galt’s Gulch. The people who went there did so of their own choosing and could theoretically leave when they so chose. For example, Dagny Taggart, the main character of Atlas Shrugged, enters and leaves Galt’s Gulch of her own volition after having discovered it. The people who chose to stay in Galt’s Gulch do so because they believe in its purpose and in John Galt’s cause. There is no supreme state authority compelling them to stay, regulating their trade, or beating them and caging them for leaving or trading with others outside the settlement. As Dr. Packer points out, there was no true formal government at all in Galt’s Gulch:
Some have made the case that Galt’s Gulch is politically anarchic with order spontaneously emerging from the free market (Sechrest 2007: 189-91). Rand uses capitalism to replace the role of government resulting in a city free from coercion, and thus completely consistent with her political philosophy of Objectivism. The values of the citizens also align almost exactly with Rand’s philosophy. Even something as simple as borrowing a car without paying a fee is considered taboo because, as town founder John Gulch explains to Taggart, “we have no laws in this valley, no rules, no formal organization of any kind. We come here because we want to rest. But we have certain customs, which we all observe, because they pertain to the things we need to rest from. So I’ll warn you now that there is only one word which is forbidden in this valley: the word ‘give’.” (Rand 1992: 655)
The Battle for Galt’s Gulch: Bioshock as Critique of Objectivism, pg. 213
Galt’s Gulch then is a voluntaryist society run on principles of anarcho-capitalism with no formal government of any sort which is meant to be a temporary refugee for a short period before the people in it return to the wider world in order to enact the social change they believe necessary to save it.
Rapture is the exact opposite.
Rapture
In Bioshock, Andrew Ryan, the founder of Rapture, fully intends Rapture to be a long term and permanent settlement. This alone establishes it as a fundamentally different place than Galt’s Gulch. Galt’s Gulch never had to worry about long term resource management and resources exactly because it was always meant to be temporary. Therefore the people there could afford to temporarily isolate themselves from the rets of the world because before that isolation became a strain on their resources they would already be prepared to return to society at large. Because Rapture was meant to be permanent (and under the ocean at that) it would always face the problem of resource management and distribution. if Rapture had been allowed full and constant access to the surface world for trade this might have been ameliorated by a constant influx of cheap goods and resources from outside the city. Instead, the exact opposite happened:
Andrew Ryan’s hostility and paranoia towards so-called “Parasites”, and others he believed were exploiting Rapture’s freedoms resulted in him issuing an edict, ordering that all contact with the outside world be severed. This was intended to ensure Rapture’s safety by keeping the city’s existence secret from the surface world, which was now in the midst of the Cold War.
Here is our second essential difference between Galt’s Gulch and Rapture as well as the first major example of how Bioshock is not an example of Objectivism because the society, setting, and people within the game never exemplify Objectivist beliefs. Objectivists and Objectivism demands a completely open free market with people being able to engage in total free trade unrestricted by government regulation. Yet, here we clearly see this is not the case as Andrew Ryan completely cuts Rapture off from the surface world, entirely forbids free trade, and institutes strict controls over the economy. From the very start of Rapture as a settlement. Needless to say that it is impossible to be Objectivist while openly rejecting one of the essential beliefs and core values of Objectivism – free market capitalism – and embracing one of the very things Objectivists reject most – state regulation and control over trade. Saying Rapture is an Objectivist settlement when it rejects free trade, is built on state regulation of the economy, and is ruled by a government that refuses to allow people to leave (all of which makes it the exact opposite of Galt’s Gulch) is a bit like claiming a Satanist and a Christian are the same thing because they both believe in God.
This type of regulation is only made possible in Rapture through the same means that it is only possible everywhere else – through the State. In the case of Rapture, the statist (“state-ist”) organization in question is the democratically elected Rapture Central Council:
The Rapture Central Council, or Council for short, was the main legislative body in Rapture before Andrew Ryan took direct control of the city during the Civil War. …Despite Ryan’s strong anti-government policies, the Council nonetheless had emergency powers to control individual citizens’ assets, to appropriate itself of private companies, and to issue arrest warrants
That last sentence is a great example of how nonsensical the game’s attempts at critiquing Objectivism can get. No one with “strong anti-governmental” beliefs would willingly help establish and head a government force with the power to seize control of companies, seize the the wealth of property of individuals, and order the hunting down and caging of individuals whenever those in power decided they should be able to do so (i.e. when they decided it was an “emergency.”) This is another example of a fundamental difference between Rapture and Galt’s Gulch and the idea sin Bioshock and the ideals of Objectivism. Galt’s Gulch was an anarcho-capitalist society with no centralized state whatsoever, no governing body, no council to issue edicts and commanding orders that must be obeys, no group of oligarchs that could simply seize the wealth and property of people and imprison them. But Rapture did. From the very start.
The Rapture Civil War
This leads to one of the main problems of the game – the Rapture Civil War. Because the Council (of which Andrew Ryan was the chairman) made it illegal to engage in free trade they automatically created a black market for all the needed goods and services which could not be had easily or cheaply (if at all) in Rapture itself. The man who runs this black market, or is at least the biggest mover and shaker in it, is Frank Fontaine. This allows Fontaine to grow so wealthy that he becomes a threat to Ryan’s wealth and control in Rapture, so Ryan begins to use his considerable political power to destroy Fontaine, up to an including making smuggling a capital crime (meaning one can be killed for committing it.) This explodes into open civil war as the supporters of the two sides – one led by the mysterious Atlas and the other by Ryan – begin to openly attempt to destroy one another. This kind of conflict is normal in a statist society that has a government which can regulate and control trade, thereby using its powers to benefit those with political connections to the detriment of those who do not. But it would be utterly impossible in an Objectivist society.
The reason the Rapture Civil War would never happen in an Objectivist society is two-fold.
First: Free market capitalism would be a guaranteed right of all people. There would never have been any laws against free and open trade in all goods and services with and voluntary trade to and from the surface. This means there never would have been a black market in smuggling that Fontaine could have monopolized through criminal force which would have provided him the profits he needed to challenge Ryan’s power and influence. Instead there would have been a great many competitors all engaged in trade with and travel to the surface, which would have lowered both the cost of otherwise scarce resources (in turn lessening the social tensions that led to violence in Rapture) and which would have prevented Fontaine from becoming the command force that he was in the game.
Second: In an Objectivist society there would be no centralized state that could arbitrarily seize control to wealth and property of private individuals and corporations. As a result, Ryan would have never been able to go after his competitors like Fontaine, never been able to seize their assets, never been able to kill those who he did not like. Therefore there would be no inciting violence to explode into outright civil war. Without the state, without the centralized government, everything Ryan did would simply have been impossible.
There is one other way that free market capitalism as promoted by Objectivists would have prevented the Rapture Civil War. Fontaine’s foot soldiers are mostly extremely poor people who he helps through charity organizations and who in turn feel more loyalty to him than they do to Ryan who did nothing for them. As Fontaine says in an audio log in the game:
These sad saps. They come to Rapture thinking they’re gonna be captains of industry, but they all forget that somebody’s gotta scrub the toilets. What an angle they gave me… I hand these mugs a cot and a bowl of soup, and they give me their lives. Who needs an army when I got Fontaine’s Home for the Poor?
The argument of the game is that Andrew Ryan, by mostly recruiting the world’s greatest artists, experts, scientists, inventors, and geniuses to come to Rapture, creates a top heavy class system that traps the working class into the lowest economic and social strata while allowing the privileged experts the wealth to do whatever they wanted. The dissatisfaction at their social station and the poverty it brings coupled with the fact that all religion is illegal in Rapture, and therefore the people have no hope for anything better here or hereafter, is what Fontaine takes advantage of to win followers for his rebellion.
The problem with this argument is that is is incredibly stupid.
The only way for this scenario to make sense is if you assume that people who do things like custodial work (cleaning homes, businesses, etc.) get low pay simply because they do or that the rich and powerful pay them less simply because. But this is completely economically illiterate. That isn’t how wages work. Like all other prices, wages are determined by supply and demand. On the surface low skilled workers such as custodians and janitors make lower wages because their basic job skills are extremely common. The supply of employable workers for janitorial jobs is higher than the demand for those jobs. The end result of this is that custodians and janitors don’t get paid much.
But that would be different in Rapture where you have a huge number of privileged wealthy people (that artists, experts, scientists, inventors, etc. are all wealthy elites is another nonsensical assumption the game makes) who simply don’t want to do those jobs. Because the amount of people in Rapture is naturally limited (due to Rapture being a hard to reach secret underwater city) and there is a higher percentage of people who do not want to do what they see as menial and lower class labor this means that the demand for those jobs is higher than normal while the supply of those jobs is much lower than normal. If anything, in a free market which Rapture is supposed to have (but which we have already established in actually doesn’t) the lower class workers of Rapture would be able to demand higher wages and better treatment than anywhere else on the planet, resulting in them living at a higher standard of living than anywhere else on the planet. These people would never wage a civil war because life in Rapture would be better for them than any other place and they would not want to destroy it. They wouldn’t be disgruntled, but thankful.
Andrew Ryan
We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.
-Andrew Ryan
From the fact that his name is almost an anagram of her to the fact that the character’s voice actor, Armin Shimerman, was explicitly told that he was “an Ayn Rand sort of character,” it is pretty clear that, at least in the eyes of the the creators of Bioshock, Andrew Ryan is essentially supposed to be a fictionalized gender swapped version of the real life Ayn Rand and an avatar of her ideals. The problem is that, other than a few superficial points in his character history, (for example both escape the Soviet Union after World War 1 by fleeing to the United States and both are atheists) Ryan is nothing like Rand and in no way exemplifies her ideals. All of the major events and problems in Rapture from its founding – the institution of a statist government, the fact that all religion is illegal, the fact that speech is regulated by the government, the use of government power to destroy business rivals and seize control of their wealth and assets, the complete rejection of free trade from the very start – all of it falls at the feet of Andrew Ryan. And they all prove something very important about him.
Everything Ryan does is a violation of the central ideals of Objectivism. Certainly he is as disdainful of religion as Objectivists normally are, but that doesn’t mean he is anymore grounded in reality than any theist. His actions – especially in the way that he attacks Fontaine – are complete irrational. They are obviously stupid and the only consequences of them would be strengthening Fontaine’s support among the masses. It isn’t that what he does is immoral or not and whether he would care about the difference. The problem is that his actions are illogical and stupid and obviously the exact wrong things to do. Unlike Objectivists who, motivated by rational self-interest have developed a very complex and deep morality that forbids them from doing harm to others or violating even the least right of others, Ryan intentionally acts against his own rational self-interest repeatedly by violating the rights of others. While Rand and objectivists think religion false they have no desire to make religions illegal as to do so would be a violation of basic human liberty. yet Tyan does it without a second thought. And from the very start he completely disregards even the most basic principles of free market capitalism in order to enact monopolistic control and powerful state regulation of the economy of Rapture by forbidding trade with the surface, using government power to shut down his competition, and seizing the property of others through violence. John Galt he is not.
In fact, Ryan is such a violation of everything an Objectivist believes in it is fundamentally impossible to even see him as ever having been an Objectivist. Instead of being an expy of Ayn Rand or an Avatar of Objectivism it is very clear that Andrew Ryan is the very opposite of an Objectivist. Like the character of corporate mogul James Taggart, one of the main villains of Atlas Shrugged. A common error that many make is thinking that Rand always made corporate and business leaders into heroes and political leaders as villains. This is not true. Most often the worst villains of Rand’s writings are corporate and business leaders, and James Taggart is among the worst in all of Rand’s works. This description describes Taggart perfectly:
Taggart is forced to evade understanding his true motives. He lies to himself endlessly, trying to convince himself that he seeks to gain wealth, to protect the interests of his railroad, to help “friends” such as Orren Boyle, or to serve the “public welfare.” The truth is that Taggart doesn’t value wealth, life, the railroad, success, Boyle, or the public. If “value” means to have a strong positive commitment to some life-enhancing person, object, or process, Taggart values nothing. On the contrary, he hates people capable of achieving values and living successfully. He is riddled with envy, which Ayn Rand defines as “hatred of the good for being the good.” Only one thing compels him: to wreak such devastation that the good have no chance to survive.
That also describes Andrew Ryan perfectly. Andrew Ryan is just another corporate hack looking to use his connections to and control of the levers of political power to destroy his opponents and seize control of the wealth of the populace. And he does it all under the mask of deceiving and self-deluding rhetoric meant to hide his true goals from even himself. For all his stirring speeches about Parasites, Men, and Slaves, all of it is just a façade to hide his true motivations. He lies to himself, he lies to others, and he lies to all of Rapture as he tries to recast his blatant violations of even the basic tenets of his professed beliefs in order to steal the wealth and control the lives of others for his own benefit. In short, despite everything he said, it is obvious from his actions that from the very start, long before Rapture collapsed and things turned bad, Andrew Ryan was never ever an Objectivist. He was in fact the opposite of an Objectivist. In any Ayn Rand story Andrew Ryan would be the collectivist corporate villain.
So What Was Bioshock Really About?
A man chooses, a slave obeys.
-Andrew Ryan
The reality of who Andrew Ryan was undermines the entire premise of Bioshock as a critique of Objectivism. You cannot say Objectivism caused such and such problems in Rapture if those involved were never Objectivists, were never motivated by Objectivist ideals/beliefs, and from the very start did not institute Objectivist beliefs but instituted policies and programs that were the exact opposite of Objectivism. Despite the intentions of the authors of the game, whose profound ignorance of Objectivism and Ayn Rand caused them to not even be able to have started Bioshock‘s backstory in an Objectivist society, the story of Bioshock serves as just one more warning about the dangers of collectivism, statism, and Leftist politics. It isn’t Objectivism and rampant greed that destroys Rapture. It is government control regulation of the economy, the nationalization of businesses, democracy, and the centralization of power in the name of the common good that destroys Rapture.
Having never started off with an Objectivist society nothing happening in Rapture by the time the game starts can be described as being caused by Objectivism. But because Rapture, from its very start, is governed by currently popular ideas about how governments should function, regulate the economy, and control society, you can say the the problems in Rapture are the ultimate outcomes of modern Leftist political ideas. Which leads to a deep irony. Far from its goal, the reality is that Bioshock doesn’t demonstrate the failures of Objectivism. Instead, Bioshock demonstrates the superiority of free market capitalism and Objectivist societies to modern statist democracies by giving us another example of the inevitable collapse of such societies into violence and chaos.