On Practice

An important philosophical work by Mao Zedong which systematically expounded on the dialectical materialist epistemology. Written in July 1937, it is Chapter II, Section 11 of the Lectures on Dialectical Materialism (Teaching Material), later, it was compiled into the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 1 under the title of “On Practice”. Mao Zedong once used this text as preparation material for his speech at the Chinese Anti-Japanese Military-Political University (Yan'an). Mao Zedong wrote On Practice in order to expose the two types of subjectivist errors such as the dogmatism and empiricism in the Party, and especially focused on the error of dogmatism, from the standpoint of Marxist epistemology. The work was entitled “On Practice” because its stress was on exposing the dogmatism kind of subjectivism, which belittled practice.

On Practice focused on the theme of "the relationship between cognition and practice—the relationship between cognition and social practice", and expounded the dependence of cognition on social practice, thus firmly established the status of practice as the basis of cognition from the aspect of philosophical theory; the work expounded the dialectical development process of cognition based on practice, and put forward a complete theory on the development process of cognition. The work has clarified that social practice is the basic source of human cognition, the driving force for the development of cognition from lower levels to higher levels, thus practice is regarded as the criterion to test the truth of people's cognition in respect to external world. It pointed out that practicality is one of the two remarkable characteristics of Marxist dialectical materialist philosophy, " it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on practice and in turn serves practice". The dialectical-materialist theory of cognition places practice in the primary position, holds that human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice and repudiates all the erroneous theories which deny the primary status of practice or separate knowledge from practice. It emphasizes in particular that “the truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by its objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth.”

The work illustrated how human cognition is derived from practice and serves practice. From perceptual knowledge to rational knowledge is the first leap in the cognition process, namely, the stage of sense perceptions and impressions. Perceptual knowledge is the lower stage of cognition, while rational knowledge or inference is the higher and advanced stage of cognition. In the course from the perceptual knowledge reflecting the phenomena of things to the rational knowledge, and in order to fully reflect a thing in its totality, reflect its essence, reflect its inherent laws, and it is necessary through the exercise of thought to reconstruct the rich data of sense perception, discarding the dross and selecting the essential, eliminating the false and retaining the true, proceeding from the one to the other and from the outside to the inside, in order to form a system of concepts and theories—it is necessary to make a leap from perceptual to rational knowledge.

The perceptual and the rational knowledge are qualitatively different but are not divorced from each other; they are unified on the basis of practice. Rational knowledge depends upon perceptual knowledge and perceptual knowledge remains to be developed into rational knowledge—this is the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge (cognition). In philosophy, neither the school of "rationalism" nor "empiricism" understands the historical or the dialectical nature of knowledge, and although each of these schools contains one aspect of the truth, both are wrong on the theory of knowledge (epistemology) as a whole. From rational cognition to practice is the second leap in the process of cognition. Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice.

This means to let rational knowledge return to revolutionary practice of changing the world, this is the process of testing and developing theory, the continuation of the whole process of cognition. The problem of whether rational knowledge is in line with reality can be solved only by returning to practice and verifying it in practice. Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely because it guides practice. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance.

People's knowledge or theories of a definite objective process often needs to go through these two "leaps" for many times before they are complete, people create ideas, theories, plans or programmes so as to generally achieve corresponding status between their theory and the law of the objective process. As far as the objective process goes on, human cognition will not be fully completed. In social practice, the process of coming into being, developing and passing away is infinite, and so is the process of coming into being, developing and passing away in human knowledge, in this way the work also illustrated the relationship between the absolute truth and relative truth. It pointed out that in the absolute and general process of development of the universe, the development of each particular process is relative, and that hence, in the endless flow of absolute truth, man's knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is only relative truth. The sum total of innumerable relative truths constitutes absolute truth.

Marxism-Leninism has in no way exhausted truth but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of truth in the course of practice. Through a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between cognition and practice, the work makes a complete and concise summary of the development process of human cognition: "Discovering truth through practice, and proving truth and developing truth through practice." “Start 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. 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 (epistemology), and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.”

The work has comprehensively analyzed the mistakes of empiricism and dogmatism, criticized their results as right opportunism and “Left” empty talk. It pointed out that idealism and mechanical materialism, opportunism and adventurism, are all characterized by the breach between the subjective and the objective, by the separation of knowledge from practice. “Our conclusion or judgement is the concrete, historical unity of the subjective and the objective, of theory and practice, of knowing and doing, and we are opposed to all erroneous ideologies, whether “Left” or Right, which depart from concrete history.”

On Practice has summed up the practical experience of the Chinese revolution, inherited and developed the epistemological thought of Marxism-Leninism, which is an important theoretical achievement in the course of the Sinicization of Marxism. It armed the Chinese Communists with dialectical materialist epistemology and, together with Mao Zedong’s other work On Contradiction, On Practice laid philosophical theoretical foundation for the Sinicization of Marxism and had a profound impact on the theory and practice of the Communist Party of China.