《实践论》英文版.doc

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1、实践论英文版ON PRACTICEOn the Relation Between Knowledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing July 1937 There used to be a number of comrades in our Party who were dogmatists and who for a long period rejected the experience of the Chinese revolution, denying the truth that Marxism is not a dogma but a

2、 guide to action and overawing people with words and phrases from Marxist works, torn out of context. There were also a number of comrades who were empiricists and who for a long period restricted themselves to their own fragmentary experience and did not understand the importance of theory for revo

3、lutionary practice or see the revolution as a whole, but worked blindly though industriously. The erroneous ideas of these two types of comrades, and particularly of the dogmatists, caused enormous losses to the Chinese revolution during 1931-34, and yet the dogmatists cloaking themselves as Marxist

4、s, confused a great many comrades. On Practice was written in order to expose the subjectivist errors of dogmatism and empiricism in the Party, and especially the error of dogmatism, from the standpoint of the Marxist theory of knowledge. It was entitled On Practice because its stress was on exposin

5、g the dogmatist kind of subjectivism, which belittles practice. The ideas contained in this essay were presented by Comrade Mao Tse-tung in a lecture at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political College in Yenan. Before Marx, materialism examined the problem of knowledge apart from the social nature

6、of man and apart from his historical development, and was therefore incapable of understanding the dependence of knowledge on social practice, that is, the dependence of knowledge on production and the class struggle. Above all, Marxists regard mans activity in production as the most fundamental pra

7、ctical activity, the determinant of all his other activities. Mans knowledge depends mainly on his activity in material production, through which he comes gradually to understand the phenomena, the properties and the laws of nature, and the relations between himself and nature; and through his activ

8、ity in production he also gradually comes to understand, in varying degrees, certain relations that exist between man and man. None of this knowledge can be acquired apart from activity in production. In a classless society every person, as a member of society, joins in common effort with the other

9、members, enters into definite relations of production with them and engages in production to meet mans material needs. In all class societies, the members of the different social classes also enter, in different ways, into definite relations of production and engage in production to meet their mater

10、ial needs. This is the primary source from which human knowledge develops. Mans social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many other forms-class struggle, political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the

11、practical life of society. Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through his material life but also through his political and cultural life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life). Of these other types of social practice,

12、 class struggle in particular, in all its various forms, exerts a profound influence on the development of mans knowledge. In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class. Marxists hold that in hum

13、an society activity in production develops step by step from a lower to a higher level and that consequently mans knowledge, whether of nature or of society, also develops step by step from a lower to a higher level, that is, from the shallower to the deeper, from the one-sided to the many-sided. Fo

14、r a very long period in history, men were necessarily confined to a one-sided understanding of the history of society because, for one thing, the bias of the exploiting classes always distorted history and, for another, the small scale of production limited mans outlook. It was not until the modern

15、proletariat emerged along with immense forces of production (large-scale industry) that man was able to acquire a comprehensive, historical understanding of the development of society and turn this knowledge into a science, the science of Marxism. Marxists hold that mans social practice alone is the

16、 criterion of the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually happens is that mans knowledge is verified only when he achieves the anticipated results in the process of social practice (material production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants to succeed in his wo

17、rk, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the ext

18、ernal world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by failure is the mother of success and a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit. The dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be separated

19、 from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice. Thus Lenin said, Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality. 1 The Marxist philo

20、sophy of dialectical materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of the proletariat. The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on prac

21、tice and in turn serves practice. The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical material

22、ist theory of knowledge. 2 But how then does human knowledge arise from practice and in turn serve practice? This will become clear if we look at the process of development of knowledge. In the process of practice, man at first sees only the phenomenal side, the separate aspects, the external relati

23、ons of things. For instance, some people from outside come to Yenan on a tour of observation. In the first day or two, they see its topography, streets and houses; they meet many people, attend banquets, evening parties and mass meetings, hear talk of various kinds and read various documents, all th

24、ese being the phenomena, the separate aspects and the external relations of things. This is called the perceptual stage of cognition, namely, the stage of sense perceptions and impressions. That is, these particular things in Yenan act on the sense organs of the members of the observation group, evo

25、ke sense perceptions and give rise in their brains to many impressions together with a rough sketch of the external relations among these impressions: this is the first stage of cognition. At this stage, man cannot as yet form concepts, which are deeper, or draw logical conclusions. As social practi

26、ce continues, things that give rise to mans sense perceptions and impressions in the course of his practice are repeated many times; then a sudden change (leap) takes place in the brain in the process of cognition, and concepts are formed. Concepts are no longer the phenomena, the separate aspects a

27、nd the external relations of things; they grasp the essence, the totality and the internal relations of things. Between concepts and sense perceptions there is not only a quantitative but also a qualitative difference. Proceeding further, by means of judgement and inference one is able to draw logic

28、al conclusions. The expression in San Kuo Yen Yi, 3 knit the brows and a stratagem comes to mind, or in everyday language, let me think it over, refers to mans use of concepts in the brain to form judgements and inferences. This is the second stage of cognition. When the members of the observation g

29、roup have collected various data and, what is more, have thought them over, they are able to arrive at the judgement that the Communist Partys policy of the National United Front Against Japan is thorough, sincere and genuine. Having made this judgement, they can, if they too are genuine about uniti

30、ng to save the nation, go a step further and draw the following conclusion, The National United Front Against Japan can succeed. This stage of conception, judgement and inference is the more important stage in the entire process of knowing a thing; it is the stage of rational knowledge. The real tas

31、k of knowing is, through perception, to arrive at thought, to arrive step by step at the comprehension of the internal contradictions of objective things, of their laws and of the internal relations between one process and another, that is, to arrive at logical knowledge. To repeat, logical knowledg

32、e differs from perceptual knowledge in that perceptual knowledge pertains to the separate aspects, the phenomena and the external relations of things, whereas logical knowledge takes a big stride forward to reach the totality, the essence and the internal relations of things and discloses the inner

33、contradictions in the surrounding world. Therefore, logical knowledge is capable of grasping the development of the surrounding world in its totality, in the internal relations of all its aspects. This dialectical-materialist theory of the process of development of knowledge, basing itself on practi

34、ce and proceeding from the shallower to the deeper, was never worked out by anybody before the rise of Marxism. Marxist materialism solved this problem correctly for the first time, pointing out both materialistically and dialectically the deepening movement of cognition, the movement by which man i

35、n society progresses from perceptual knowledge to logical knowledge in his complex, constantly recurring practice of production and class struggle. Lenin said, The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short, all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstr

36、actions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely. 4 Marxism-Leninism holds that each of the two stages in the process of cognition has its own characteristics, with knowledge manifesting itself as perceptual at the lower stage and logical at the higher stage, but that both are stages in an i

37、ntegrated process of cognition. The perceptual and the rational are qualitatively different, but are not divorced from each other; they are unified on the basis of practice. Our practice proves that what is perceived cannot at once be comprehended and that only what is comprehended can be more deepl

38、y perceived. Perception only solves the problem of phenomena; theory alone can solve the problem of essence. The solving of both these problems is not separable in the slightest degree from practice. Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is,

39、 by living (practicing) in its environment. In feudal society it was impossible to know the laws of capitalist society in advance because capitalism had not yet emerged, the relevant practice was lacking. Marxism could be the product only of capitalist society. Marx, in the era of laissez-faire capi

40、talism, could not concretely know certain laws peculiar to the era of imperialism beforehand, because imperialism, the last stage of capitalism, had not yet emerged and the relevant practice was lacking; only Lenin and Stalin could undertake this task. Leaving aside their genius, the reason why Marx

41、, Engels, Lenin and Stalin could work out their theories was mainly that they personally took part in the practice of the class struggle and the scientific experimentation of their time; lacking this condition, no genius could have succeeded. The saying, without stepping outside his gate the scholar

42、 knows all the wide worlds affairs, was mere empty talk in past times when technology was undeveloped. Even though this saying can be valid in the present age of developed technology, the people with real personal knowledge are those engaged in practice the wide world over. And it is only when these

43、 people have come to know through their practice and when their knowledge has reached him through writing and technical media that the scholar can indirectly know all the wide worlds affairs. If you want to know a certain thing or a certain class of things directly, you must personally participate i

44、n the practical struggle to change reality, to change that thing or class of things, for only thus can you come into contact with them as phenomena; only through personal participation in the practical struggle to change reality can you uncover the essence of that thing or class of things and compre

45、hend them. This is the path to knowledge which every man actually travels, though some people, deliberately distorting matters, argue to the contrary. The most ridiculous person in the world is the know all who picks up a smattering of hearsay knowledge and proclaims himself the worlds Number One au

46、thority; this merely shows that he has not taken a proper measure of himself. Knowledge is a matter of science, and no dishonesty or conceit whatsoever is permissible. What is required is definitely the reverse-honesty and modesty. If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changin

47、g reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure and properties of the atom, you must make physical and chemical experiments to change the state of the atom. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution,

48、 you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. But one cannot have direct experience of everything; as a matter of fact, most of our knowledge comes from indirect experience, for example, all knowledge from past times and foreign lands. To our ancestors and

49、 to foreigners, such knowledge was-or is-a matter of direct experience, and this knowledge is reliable if in the course of their direct experience the requirement of scientific abstraction, spoken of by Lenin, was-or is-fulfilled and objective reality scientifically reflected, otherwise it is not reliable. Hence a mans knowledge consists only of two parts, that which comes from direct experience and that which comes from indirect experience. Moreover, what is indirect experience for me