Particle multiplicity in proton-proton collisions with ALICE

Proton-proton collisions at the LHC will be studied with the ALICE detector, not only as a benchmark for the comparison with heavy-ion reactions, but also as a mean to study important aspects of pp physics in the new energy domain probed by the LHC. A report will be given here on the potentialities of ALICE in the study of the global properties of pp events, and especially of their multiplicity. This will be one of the main issues in pp physics where, because of the special features of its design, ALICE will be competitive with the other LHC experiments.