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There was quite a bit written in the actual 1950's in the US about the stultifying sameness of the new suburbs and what they were doing to the people who lived there. John Keats' definitive 1957 study "The Crack In The Picture Window" painted a disturbing picture of what mainstream postwar America was becoming -- shallow, consumption-driven, and emotionally-isolated. Richard Yates' 1961 novel "Revolutionary Road" is the most searing literary indictment of suburbia and the mindset it promoted. These were also the days when there was a strong critique arising of what the humorist Jean Shepherd called "creeping meatballism" -- the vapid television shows, the cheesy movies, the smarmy, pandering advertising campaigns, the whole "You Auto Buy Now" idea that you were what you consumed.
Despite the suburban sameness, the popularity of these and similar critical viewpoints demonstrates that there were still many Americans who were free-thinking and critical of what was going on in the world. Keats' book was a best seller, as were Vance Packard's various studies of consumerism and modern marketing techniques. So clearly not everyone was thinking like The Organization Man In The Grey Flannel Suit. Even little kids were reading "Mad" magazine, which taught them over and over again that they were being lied to and exploited by an society which only valued them as consumers.
I think this is one of the reasons you see the rise of homesteading in the 1940s. If you read books like The Have More Plan it seems to be a reaction by those who wanted out of consumption and wanted to define life by means other than material.
We tend to think of a "counter-culture" movement like homesteading as being entirely of the sixties hippies. It wasn't.