Looking back over that last piece on Socialism and Subsistence I didn't settle on how these ideas related to my study of the counterculture. I found a note in my journal which clarifies this:
"The British Working Class" were just people, much like indigenous tribal peoples, living their lives in a certain way. With a practice. And they were dispossessed of that traditional life and those skills by a greedy, status-obsessed, conniving, foolish, self-appointed elite. They were turned off the land, evicted from the villages, herded to the cities, and spoon-fed stimulants and popular culture. This is what the whole folk music thing is about in alternative culture, it represents an intensely localised craft which is of an essentially traditional nature. Of course, the folk music category should include modern musics like Hardcore, Jungle, Hip-hop, Dancehall, Trap - all the Dissensus reverse-snobbery music.
Population growth and agricultural technology complicate this, but broadly this is what is meant by E.P. Thompson's title "The MAKING of the English Working Class" - because Thompson views this category or section of society as being artificially created, MADE through the dispossession enacted by the ruling class.
Therefore my study of the counterculture is ACTUALLY the study of a section of the bourgeoisie that, without really understanding why, yearned for that traditional culture. The spiritual beliefs (not the hierarchical bullshit that became the Christian church), the traditional agriculture, the natural food, the community living. They only latched on to ideas from the East – because, perhaps without realising it, they were actually closer to their own traditional ideas.