capitalism

Foreign Policy 177
social institutions. Society is not the result of calculation,
but arises spontaneously, and its institutions are not the
result of intentional design, but of men’s actions, which
have as their purpose an array of short-term private objectives.
As Ferguson wrote:
Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in
what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal
blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments,
which are indeed the result of human action, but
not the execution of any human design.
That conception, that social structures are formed spontaneously
and that it is possible to have ordered arrangements
of great complexity without a designer or coordinator, is possibly
the single most spectacular contribution to social philosophy
of the Scottish Enlightenment and is reflected in Adam
Smith’s description of the market as an “invisible hand” and
in David Hume’s discussions of the origin and nature of justice.
It was via the Scottish Enlightenment that the theory
entered British liberal thought and was employed to explain
why social order and individual liberty are perfectly compatible.
At the same time, the theory provided a powerful argument
against dirigiste systems and added strength to the
arguments, put forward most forcefully by F. A. Hayek in the
20th century, that institutional arrangements that operate
under central direction are unable to coordinate the many
diverse interests, bits of knowledge, and plans that make up
what Adam Smith called “the Great Society.”
See also Civil Society; Enlightenment; Hume, David; Progress;
Sociology and Libertarianism; Spontaneous Order
Further Readings
RH
Hamowy, Ronald. “Progress and Commerce in Anglo-American
Thought: The Social Philosophy of Adam Ferguson.”
Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 14 (1986): 61–87.
———. The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous
Order. Carbondale and Edwardsville: University of Southern
Illinois Press, 1987.
Kettler, David. The Social and Political Philosophy of Adam
Ferguson. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1965.
Lehmann, William. Adam Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern
Sociology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1930.
Spadafora, David. The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century
Britain. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
FISHER, ANTONY (1915–1988)
Sir Antony Fisher, British philanthropist, launched an international
network of independent, public policy think tanks
to disseminate and popularize the ideas of liberty—the rule
of law, free markets, property rights, individual responsibility,
and limited government.
Born in London, Fisher served as a fighter pilot in the
Royal Air Force during World War II. After the war, his
odyssey in the world of ideas developed upon reading the
condensed version of The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich
Hayek. It crystallized Fisher’s fears that the very freedoms he
sought to protect in the war were increasingly at risk from
growing support for collectivism. Fisher visited Hayek and
shared his plans to enter politics. Instead, Hayek challenged
him to find a way to change the long-term climate of opinion.
Exactly 10 years later, in 1955, Fisher responded to
Hayek’s challenge by creating an independent research
organization to produce publications and seminars and otherwise
engage opinion leaders in the ideas of free and open
markets. He approached economists Ralph Harris and
Arthur Seldon and together they launched the Institute of
Economic Affairs in London.
Twenty years later, Fisher helped establish or advise
several other think tanks in their early years, all of which
remain highly influential today, including the Adam Smith
Institute (London), Centre for Independent Studies
(Australia), Fraser Institute (Canada), Manhattan Institute
(New York), and the Pacific Research Institute (California).
In 1981, Fisher founded the Atlas Economic Research
Foundation to institutionalize the process of assisting,
developing, and supporting free-market public policy institutes.
At present, Atlas continues in the tradition of its
founder, working with a network of approximately 200
institutes around the globe.
See also Development, Economic; Free-Market Economy; Hayek,
Friedrich A.
Further Readings
Cockett, Richard. Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the
Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–1983. New York:
HarperCollins, 1995.
Frost, Gerald. Antony Fisher, Champion of Liberty. London: Profile
Books, 2002.
FOREIGN POLICY
Throughout the first 150 years of America’s independence,
political leaders and the public alike sought to keep the
country out of armed conflicts that did not have direct relevance
to the nation’s security. Two episodes in particular,
the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War, were
major conflicts that in the minds of some historians directly
threatened the security of the American homeland.
America’s casus belli for the War of 1812 was the British
JK