My primary aim in this paper is to demonstrate that pacifism, at least when characterized as a political doctrine, is not impractical. Pacifism as a sociopolitical movement has been chiefly animated by a desire to provide an alternative to the institution of war. So I argue in the first section of the paper. In the second section I try to show that understood as a view about institutional design, pacifism is not vulnerable to philosophers’ charges of impracticality, which are aimed at pacifism as a doctrine of personal refusal. Even if the claim that pacifism is not impractical is accepted, that does not show that pacifism is right, or even that it should be taken seriously. In the third section of the paper I present some considerations in favor of the proposition that it does merit serious consideration.
