Suzanne La Follette (1893-1983). Between Feminism, Conservatorism and Libertarian Thought.

Résumé

Suzanne La Follette is among the pioneers of feminism: in her works, libertarian feminism interacts with some key themes of US political thought. La Follette, journalist, editor and a collaborator of Albert Jay Nock, is the author of Concerning Women (1926). Here she puts forward the idea that there is a parallelism between the right of property and the submission of women, institutionalized by means of marriage. For this reason, gender equality is, for La Follette, an essentially “individualistic” question, to be sought outside the framework of the State: the author thus embraces the radical proposal for the abolition of marriage, as well as the idea of a minimal State. The aim of this essay is to understand La Follette’s thought in connection with some core-concepts from both liberalism and anarchism, through the lens of the feminist debate. My goal is to give a more nuanced account of her intellectual profile, as well as her radicalism. Studying the ideas of Concerning Women allows us to focus on the relationship between individual and authority in American libertarian thought: doing so through La Follette’s works means to deal not with an abstract individual, but – more effectively – with a “genderized” one.