Louis Marlio

Louis Marlio (born February 3, 1878 in Paris , † November 26, 1952 ) was a French industrialist and civil servant. He took a leading role in the international cartel movement of the 1920s to 1940s.

Job & career

Marlio was an engineer and an economist at the same time. 1898–1900 he studied at the École polytechnique in Paris. In 1907 he made the Docteur en droit (sciences économiques). 1907–1914 he taught at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales.

Government offices

Marlio had recommended himself with his doctoral thesis from 1907 on the strategic importance of French inland navigation for public transport administration . In 1909 he joined the Ministry of Public Works (mainly infrastructure ) and held various positions there until 1914. Between 1910 and 1917 he worked for the Conseil d'État , the French constitutional court, which also advised the government.

Functions in business

Marlio became president of the French industrial group Pechiney after the First World War . This company was also the largest French aluminum producer and leader of the domestic Aluminum Français cartel . Marlio was able to enter into firm agreements with European competitors and was chairman of the newly established international aluminum cartel , the Aluminum Association , in the 1920s and 1930s .

Inexpensive electricity , usually obtained from hydropower, was important for aluminum production . From 1921 to 1931, Marlio was also President of the French Association of Hydroelectric Generators .

In 1941 Marlio became a technical and entrepreneurial advisor to the American Reynolds Industries . In 1940, the US government welcomed the company to start producing aluminum after the previous monopoly on the American market - Alcoa - had denied the need to expand production.

Franco-German Study Committee

After 1926, Marlio joined the newly founded Franco-German Study Committee (Comité Franco-Allemand d'Information et de Documentation; also: Mayrisch Committee). The entrepreneurs, politicians and scholars represented there discussed projects to improve and revitalize Franco-German economic relations. 1931-1933 Marlio was president of a section of the study committee. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, the study committee continued until 1938, albeit without any significant activities.

Engagement against Hitler Germany

With the increasing German threat, Marlio advocated more decisive armaments efforts by the Western powers , particularly in the construction of military aircraft . In June 1940 he went to the United States and gave lectures at several universities, in which he declared the need for the United States to go to war against the European dictatorships . His functions at Pechiney , in the French cartel and in the international aluminum cartel had become obsolete at the latest with the German invasion of France, so that he was free to take on an advisory role at Reynolds Industries . Marlio got to know the Brookings Institution , a think tank close to the American Democrats , through his academic work , which later supported him.

Commitment to reforming the world economy towards more cartelization

Marlio was not only chairman of an important international cartel, the Aluminum Association , but from the late 1920s onwards he was also generally involved in promoting more and better cartels in the world economy . “Marlio […] became one of the main actors of the international cartel movements after the war.” He was commissioned by the League of Nations as an industrial expert in 1929 and 1930 and was co-author of two reports. In August 1938 Marlio took part in the Colloque Walter Lippmann in Paris, a roundtable of scholars, entrepreneurs and politicians, at which a revival of liberalism and a suppression of National Socialism and its authoritarian economy were discussed. Marlio stayed true to this theme even through World War II . A renewed liberalism and cartels seemed (at least for Marlio) quite compatible at the time.

Marlio remained influential in the aluminum industry throughout his life - after 1940 resp. 1945, when he lost his positions at Pechiney and in the cartel associations for aluminum respectively. did not return to his previous functions. In 1947 he wrote a technical article on the International Aluminum Cartel for the American Brookings Institution .

Works by Marlio

• La politique allemande et la navigation intérieure , Paris 1907.
• International industrial cartels. An economic policy study . Prepared for the economic committee of the League of Nations. Berlin 1930 (together with: Antonio S. Benni / Clemens Lammers / Aloys Meyer; also in English and French).
• General report on the economic side of the international industrial cartels . Prepared for the Economic Committee of the League of Nations, Berlin 1932 (together with: Antonio S. Benni / Clemens Lammers / Aloys Meyer; also in English and French).
• Le Sort du capitalisme , Paris 1938.
• Dictature ou liberté , Paris 1940.
• A short war through American industrial superiority , Washington 1941.
• Will electric power be a bottleneck? , Washington 1942.
• The Control of Germany and Japan , Washington 1944.
• Le Libéralisme social (Conference à la Société d'Économie Politique). Paris 1946.
• The Aluminum Cartel , Washington 1947.

Works about Marlio

• Marco Bertilorenzi, The international aluminum cartel, 1886 - 1978. The business and politics of a cooperative industrial institution , New York [u. a.] 2016.
• Guido Müller, European Social Relations after the First World War: The Franco-German Study Committee and the European Cultural Association , Munich 2005.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marco Bertilorenzi, The international aluminum cartel, 1886 - 1978. The business and politics of a cooperative industrial institution, New York [u. a.] 2016, p. 3.
2. ↑ Marco Bertilorenzi, The international aluminum cartel, 1886 - 1978. The business and politics of a cooperative industrial institution, New York [u. a.] 2016, p. 238.
3. ↑ Guido Müller, European social relations after the First World War: The German-French Study Committee and the European Cultural Association , Munich 2005, pp. 81, 157.
4. ↑ Guido Müller, European social relations after the First World War: The German-French Study Committee and the European Cultural Association , Munich 2005, p. 292.
5. ↑ Marco Bertilorenzi, The international aluminum cartel, 1886 - 1978. The business and politics of a cooperative industrial institution, New York [u. a.] 2016, p. 237.
6. ↑ Marco Bertilorenzi, The international aluminum cartel, 1886 - 1978. The business and politics of a cooperative industrial institution, New York [u. a.] 2016, p. 111.
7. ^ Louis Marlio: Le Libéralisme social (Conference à la Société d'Économie Politique). Paris 1946.
8. ↑ Marco Bertilorenzi, The international aluminum cartel, 1886 - 1978. The business and politics of a cooperative industrial institution, New York [u. a.] 2016, p. 276.

Web links

• Notice biographique de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques