What will happen after 155?

Albert Noguera 
eldiario.es Three months after the incarceration began, the repression of the 1-O and the application of art. 155 of the Constitution on the independence movement and the Catalan institutions, the Government of the State values ​​very positively its action arguing that it has served to decapitate, put an end or, at least, appease the Catalan conflict . It is a vision absolutely incapable of understanding historical processes. The thesis I support is the opposite,after 155, the Catalan conflict recommences with greater potential for rupture than before, for two reasons: 1. The erosion of dominant common sense; and, 2. The appearance of a new conflict structure with a change of central political cleavage.

1. The erosion of dominant common sense: Gramsci defined common sense as the main instrument of domination. However, the common sense that guarantees the reproduction of the system is not a block of facts, practices, knowledge, values ​​or stories homogeneous, uniform and free of contradictions. If we perceive it this way we would fall into an excessive absolutization of the Power that would turn the subjects into mere cultural idiots and society into a space without possible resistances. Common sense is not a pure block. The real movement of History has embedded in our common sense a multitude of contradictory practices, discourses and knowledge. In it there coexist logics that reproduce the dominant order with logics that challenge it and generate ideological suspicions towards the first.

Such depurification of dominant common sense is the result of the historical struggles of the world of work, feminist organizations, ecologists, etc. that, sometimes win and others lose, but for the simple fact of having existed, they have been generating historical accumulations that sediment and integrate as part of the common sense of an emancipatory and democratic logical societies. It is these struggles that introduce contradictions in the dominant common sense of a society, causing the legitimacy of Power not to be a complete and static possession, but a social process open in dispute, where Power is always threatened. It is not by chance that societies with a rich tradition of workers' and social struggles are today more progressive, mobilized and defiant with power than others.
If something has generated the process of mobilization and disobedience of the Catalan population, as well as the repression that is suffering, is a historical accumulated personal subjectivity in hundreds of thousands of Catalans and shared intersubjectivity, embedding in the common sense of a large part of the Catalan population numerous elements that problematize with the regime of 78 and that before the repression were not. This places the regime in a situation of greater weakness today than yesterday. I do not know how long the regime will be able to resist in Catalonia, if much or little, but what is evident is that the result of the process and, above all, imprisonment, repression and the 155, the regime is, in Catalonia, weaker and the closest break. If the repression and refusal to the agreed referendum continue, it is only a matter of time.

2. The emergence of a new conflict structure with a change of central political cleavage: In Catalonia, especially since the ruling of the Constitutional Court on the Estatut in 2010, the structure of conflict was shaped by social cleavage equality-inequality and by the national cleavage independenceism-no independence. Both in coexistence.
The refusal to allow to vote, the closing of web pages, the entrance in headquarters of political organizations and printers to seize posters, envelopes and ballots, the repression against old people the 1-0, the imprisonment of the Jordis, the destitution of the government and intervention of the institutions, the control over TV3, the judgments against the Mesa del Parlament and imprisonment of the Government, massive accusations, etc. has generated, in the consciousness of a large part of the Catalan population, a new structure of conflict where the two cleavages, the national and social, regroup and transform into a new one that happens to be configured as a central political cleavage dictatorship-democracy .
The nature of the political cleavage dictatorship-democracy is totally different from the other two. Let's look. Both the inequality-inequality cleavage and the dictatorship-democracy cleavage refer to systems of hierarchy, however, in each of them there are patterns of relationship with the State and totally different slogans of social and political mobilization. 
As for the patterns of relationship with the State, while the inequality-inequality cleavage implies a pattern of entry into the State,the cleavage dictatorship-democracy implies one of exit. In our societies where the proletariat as a revolutionary class that wanted to abolish the State has already gone down in history, the inequality-inequality cleavage implies a hierarchical system of subordinate integration, of a different position among people with unequal access to rights but characterized by desiring their inclusion or entry into the system as a way to access their rights. On the contrary, the dictatorship-democracy cleavage implies, equally, a hierarchical system although dominated by the principle of repression and denial of rights, where the only way to access rights is not the entrance but the exit from the State.
At the same time, these different patterns of relationship with the State generate totally different slogans of social and political mobilization. While within the framework of the inequality-inequality cleavage it is mobilized, it is the legislative reform of expansion of rights, in subjects and content, so that the unequal can enter the system. In the framework of the cleavage dictatorship-democracy, the slogan of mobilization is the constituent to leave the old State and build a new one where rights are guaranteed . The displacement of the central political cleavage of equality-inequality to that of dictatorship-democracy has as a consequence the extension in society of a slogan of reformist mobilization to a rupturist one.

In short, unlike the position held by the Government of the State, the 155 has not served to decapse, put an end or appease the Catalan conflict, but quite the opposite, has served to cause an erosion of the dominant common sense and the creation of a new structure of conflict configured around the political cleavage dictatorship-democracy as central . This means that although we can not predict the concrete future of the coming months in Catalonia, what we can know is that after 155, the Catalan conflict recommences with greater potential for rupture than before. Faced with this failure of the judicial and repressive solution, a political solution must necessarily be opened as in Scotland or Quebec. 
Source:http://www.eldiario.es/contrapoder/Catalunya-despues-va-pasar_6_729737030.html