Practice, Knowledge, Again Practice, and Again Knowledge

Mao Zedong's summary of the dialectic materialist theory of cognition. In his On Practice, Mao Zedong expounded the dependence of cognition on social practice, and pointed out that practice is the source of human cognition, the driving force to promote the development of cognition from low level to high level, the standard to test the truth of cognition, and the purpose to serve practice; expounded the development process of cognition based on practice, that is, from perceptual cognition to rational cognition, and from rational cognition to practice; pointed out that the development of truth is a process from relative truth to absolute truth. People's understanding of truth is never over, and Marxism does not end truth, but opens up the road of understanding truth in practice; clarified the struggle of the proletariat and the masses to transform the world, including the task of transforming the objective world and their own subjective world.

After elaborating a series of important issues in the theory of knowledge, Mao Zedong made a general summary, pointing out that discovering the truth through practice, and again through practice verifying and developing the truth, and starting from perceptual knowledge and actively developing it into rational knowledge, then starting from rational knowledge and actively guiding revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world.

“Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge, and this form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.”

Mao Zedong also summarized Marxist theory of knowledge when discussing the Party's scientific working methods. He pointed out that in all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily from the masses to the masses. This means to take the scattered and unsystematic ideas of the masses and concentrate them through study, turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas, then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through. Over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time.

Such an infinite cycle is more correct, more vivid and richer than once. This is the Marxist theory of knowledge. The working method of the mass line is the embodiment of the dialectic materialist theory of knowledge of "practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge” in the practical work of the Party.