Even in Destruction
“Even in destruction there's a right way and a wrong way—and there are limits.” ALBERT CAMUS · THE JUST ASSASSINS
Camus’s play The Just Assassins is drawn from real events. In Moscow in 1905, a group of revolutionaries plotted to kill the Grand Duke. The poet Kaliayev, bomb in hand, saw two children seated in the carriage beside the target and let the moment pass. Back in the group’s hideout, the argument erupts. Stepan, the hardest of the comrades, insists that the revolution matters more than anything it destroys. Dora answers him with the line this month circles around. Even in destruction there is a right way and a wrong way, and there are limits. Stepan shouts back that there are no limits.
The play stages an argument we are still having. If the cause is just, are the children in the carriage acceptable? Stepan says yes, because he loves an idea of humanity more than the humans in front of him. Dora and Kaliayev say no, because a justice built on dead children is no longer justice. The limit is not weakness. It is what keeps the cause from becoming the thing it fights.
You will never hold a bomb. You will hold other things. An advantage in a quarrel, a piece of damaging information, power over someone who cannot answer back. Today, decide who the children in the carriage are for you, the people no goal entitles you to harm. Decide before the moment comes. Kaliayev could refuse in time because the limit was already inside him.
