SF Hep B Free

SF Hep B Free
Putting the Social in Theory
Wednesday, December 1, 2010

SF Hep B Free is currently going through a war of position. In this war of movement, SF Hep B Free also needs to “take the offensive more openly against the oppositionists and organise permanently the ‘impossibility’ of internal disintegration – with controls of every kind, political, administrative, etc., reinforcement of the hegominic ‘positions’ of the dominant group” (238-9). They are attempting to affect change indirectly by ensuring that various aspects of civil society can empathize and began to see what change needs to be affected. We are seeing part of Gramsci’s theory of transition occurring.

In this scenario, SF Hep B Free is attempting to change society. Here, we can view the State as a “coercive apparatus to bring the mass of the people into conformity with the specific type of production and the specific economy at a given moment” (56). Right now, Hepatitis B is not seen as national priority.
More specifically, primary providers are attempting to care for all of their patients as a whole and have less time to consider health disparities such as Hepatitis B, which might only affect a minor fraction of their patients or even none of their patients. These providers generate consent and thus, hegemony of what society is unaware of. They help generate hegemony through the whole idea that they are the people, who take care of us and have no ill-intended thoughts in their mind. They only have the intention of ensuring our well being. However, the problem in terms of Hep B awareness is that they might not know how to ensure a person’s well-being if that person might have Hepatitis B. These providers’ lack of knowledge of how to deal with a health disparity ends up leaving society to deal with the real truth of what is at stake, the rotation “of the ruling-class parties, not the foundation and organization of a new political society, and even less of a new type of civil society” (160). What is really at stake is this system, where people, who have Hepatitis B and dying from it despite the lack of resources available. The vaccine has been around since the 1960s and yet over 270 million people in the world have this disease. This cycle needs to be broken for change to be able to affect society. The best way for change to affect society is through a war of position. This war of position, “once won, is decisive definitively” (239) and as a result, change will occur. However, “the war of position demands enormous sacrifices by infinite masses of people” (239). SF Hep B Free needs to stay strong and continue to mobilize groups of support from their cause, not to just focus on Asian interest groups, but the community as a whole from churches to trade unions, and businesses.

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