Abstract
Using the example of the American motivational psychologist David C. McClelland, this article analyses how psychologists in the long 1960s acted as generous purveyors of knowledge in order to bring about far reaching social change, without having to enter the field of institutionalised politics. The article thus explores a supposedly passive form of activism beyond lobbying and consultating that was intended to encourage citizens to self-direct in order to bring about changes that were supposedly beyond the reach of structural planning policy. Using two case studies, it is argued that the principle of self-direction often associated with neoliberalism developed in parallel with planning policy in the long 1960s, rather than as a consequence of its failure in the 1970s and 1980s. Since this was often done in an entrepreneurial way, it led to the emergence of the entrepreneurial scientist who ran science, educational training and social reform as a business. Unlike political influence through lobbying, this form of scientific political activism was direct in that it directly impacted individual social groups, but it was also precarious in its chances of success, because whether those approached were willing to accept what was offered to them depended on conditions over which the scientists involved had no control. As early as the long 1960s, it is concluded, privately run programmes aimed at activating the individual were part of what we know as state-directed welfare policy.