Practice refers to all activities of people to transform the objective world. Practice is the practice of society. Social practice includes many aspects. The most basic practical activity of human beings is the production struggle to obtain material means of life from nature. Without productive activities, human beings can't survive, let alone other activities. In the process of production, not only people have a relationship with nature, but also people have to form a certain production relationship. On the basis of production relations, people form other social relations. Therefore, social practice includes all kinds of other social activities except the activities of transforming nature. In class society, the most basic social relationship between people is class relationship, and class struggle is the basis of social struggle. Besides production struggle and class struggle, social practice also includes other social activities related to and based on production struggle and class struggle, such as scientific experiments and artistic activities.
Idealism regards cognition as natural or subjective, rather than the reflection of objective things in human consciousness, and of course denies that cognition depends on human social practice. Some idealists also mentioned the problem of "practice" or "behavior". For example, some idealist philosophers in China feudal society often mentioned "practice" and regarded "practice" as an important effort in learning; But their so-called "mending shoes and doing my best" is nothing more than pure personal cultivation divorced from society. They believe that this kind of activity is to realize some transcendental rational principle or moral principle. This view of practice is idealistic and has nothing in common with Marxist view of practice.
Materialist philosophers before Marxism correctly admitted that cognition is a reflection of the objective outside world, but they did not understand the dependence of cognition on social practice to transform the objective world. They think that cognition is people's negative intuition about the objective world. Feuerbach, for example, sometimes mentioned practice, but he didn't really understand social practice. As Marx pointed out, "Feuerbach wants to study perceptual objects that are really different from ideological objects, but he doesn't understand human activities as objective activities ... so he doesn't understand the significance of' revolution' and' practical criticism' activities." (1) That is to say, Feuerbach only regards the objective object as the object of feeling, not the object that people transform with their own activities. He understood human activities as just negative intuition, not a struggle to transform the objective world.
(1) Marx: The Outline of Feuerbach, in Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 1, People's Publishing House, 1972, Page 16.
Social life shows that the objective external world is not only the object of people's thoughts and feelings, but also the object of people's practice, that is, the object that people transform with their own activities. Animal senses also reflect the objective world, but animals only feel the outside world in the process of adapting to the outside world. It can only reflect the outside world negatively, and its response to the objective outside world can only stay at a low level. Humans can not only adapt to the environment, but also transform the objective external world. Therefore, human knowledge is not limited to passively and intuitively reflecting the external world, but can constantly enrich perceptual knowledge, conduct abstract thinking, reflect the regularity of the objective external world, and use regular knowledge to guide practice on the basis of transforming the objective external world. This is the unique subjective initiative of human beings.
In the production practice of transforming nature, people are more and more exposed to all aspects of nature. From the outside to the inside, they gradually discover various attributes of natural objects, understand the relationship between natural phenomena, and understand various development laws of nature. In production practice, people gradually understand the social relations between people formed in the production process to varying degrees. Through the activities of social relations, people have a further understanding of various relationships between people and gradually have an understanding of social life itself. In class society, social practice is the practice of all classes, and people know society mainly through the practice of class struggle.
Comrade Mao Zedong said, "What is knowledge? Since the emergence of class society, there have been only two kinds of knowledge in the world, one is called production struggle and the other is called class struggle. Natural science and social science are the crystallization of these two kinds of knowledge, while philosophy is a summary and summary of knowledge of nature and social knowledge. " ①
(1) Rectify the Party's Style, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 3, People's Publishing House, 1966, pp. 774-773.
In class society, various forms of class struggle profoundly affect people's understanding and development, and all kinds of ideas are branded with class. Generally speaking, people's understanding of natural laws is not directly related to class interests, but under certain conditions, it is also directly or indirectly related to political struggle. For example, medieval monks in Europe once opposed Copernicus' theory of earth movement because it was not conducive to theology as a feudal superstructure; The Inquisition once brutally persecuted natural scientists and so on. The understanding of natural phenomena is still the same, not to mention the understanding of social relations directly related to class interests.
Social practice is gradually developing from low level to high level. Human knowledge about nature and society, as well as the philosophy of summing up these two kinds of knowledge, has also gradually developed from low level to high level, that is, from shallow to deep, from one aspect to many aspects. The history of human cognition shows that the new topic of cognition in each historical development stage is put forward by social practice. Social practice constantly puts forward new requirements and problems to people, and pushes people to make new explorations. Without the needs of social real life, we can't put forward the task of understanding. Moreover, only by summing up practical experience can people give correct or more correct answers to new questions raised by social practice and produce new scientific knowledge. The historicity of cognition is compatible with social practice.
Every step of natural science development is based on the development of production, which in turn further promotes production. With the further development of production, new problems are raised for natural science, and empirical materials are provided for the further development of natural science. Without production demand and production experience, the emergence and development of natural science is unimaginable. For example, the needs of animal husbandry and agriculture produce astronomy, the needs of hydraulic engineering and architecture produce mechanics, and the needs of measuring land area produce geometry. As Engels said, "once there is a technical demand in society, this demand will push science forward by more than ten universities." In other words, the need of production is the driving force to promote the development of natural science, and the emergence of universities and specialized research institutions is ultimately determined by the need of production. Social practice not only puts forward new research topics for people, but also provides production experience for scientific research. Without production experience, scientific invention is impossible. For example, after14th century, due to the great development of handicraft industry in Europe, textile, watch manufacturing and grinding provided a large number of observable materials for mechanics, dye production, metallurgy, wine making for chemistry, lens manufacturing for physics, etc., so it was not until the second half of15th century that a truly systematic natural science was produced. /kloc-In the 20th century, Britain accumulated rich experience in cultivating new varieties of vegetables, ornamental plants and livestock in agricultural production. In order to seek industrial raw materials and markets, the expedition team collected extremely rich information on animal and plant varieties. Darwin once took part in exploration activities. He carefully analyzed these rich experiences and a lot of materials and founded his theory of species evolution.
(1) Engels to operator. Borghi uz, Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 4, People's Publishing House, 1972), p. 505.
Production practice also constantly provides new technical tools for understanding, strengthens people's senses, helps people go deep into nature and reveals its secrets. The development of astronomy needs the help of telescopes. People can only see five or six thousand stars with the naked eye. More stars can be seen with telescopes, including stars more than 10 billion light-years away from the earth, and even galaxies more than10 billion light-years away from the earth can be detected with radio telescopes. Microbes can't be seen by human eyes alone, and the germs of some diseases can't be found; Without a microscope, there would be no modern biology and medicine. Without a powerful accelerator, physicists can't deeply study the movement inside the nucleus.
The understanding of social history also arises with the needs of practice and develops with the development of practice. In a long historical period, although people's understanding of social history has gradually developed and progressed, on the whole, people's understanding of social history can only be one-sided. This situation, on the one hand, is due to the prejudice that the exploiting classes often distort social history; On the other hand, due to the narrow scale of production, people's horizons are limited. Only when the proletariat appears with the great productivity-big industry, and the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie begins, can people standing on the standpoint of the proletariat make a comprehensive historical understanding of the development of social history and turn their understanding of society into science, which is Marxist science. The fundamental reason why Fourier, Saint-Simon and Owen could only put forward utopian socialism but could not establish scientific socialism at the beginning of19th century was that the capitalist mode of production and the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat were not fully developed at that time. Large-scale industry has just taken shape in Britain, but not yet in France. As Engels said, utopian socialism is an "immature theory, suitable for immature capitalist production and immature class conditions." By the middle of19th century, when social conditions were available, Marx and Engels adapted to the needs of proletarian struggle, summed up the experience of proletarian struggle, and critically absorbed the outstanding achievements of predecessors' thoughts on this basis, before they founded Marxism and turned utopian socialism into scientific socialism. Lenin summed up the new revolutionary experience under the new historical conditions and developed Marxism to a new stage. Leninism is Marxism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.
The development of people's thinking ability is also inseparable from practice. Engels said: "The wisdom of human beings develops according to how people learn to change nature." (2) Primitive barbarians who rely on instinct to adapt to the environment cannot distinguish themselves from the surrounding environment. Because of the practical activities of changing the environment, talents oppose themselves and the environment, oppose thinking and existence, that is, regard the environment as the object of transformation and understanding. At the same time, through the practice of changing the environment, people and the environment, thinking and existence are unified. Even if people's understanding gradually conforms to the objective reality, people's actions can transform the objective world more effectively. In this historical development of unity of opposites, on the one hand, it gradually changed the environment, on the other hand, it developed human thinking ability, and gradually produced various concepts and categories reflecting objective things, and also formed and developed the understanding of the regularity of objective things.
Engels: The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science, Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 4, People's Publishing House, 1972, p. 409.
Engels: Dialectics of Nature, in Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 3, People's Publishing House, 1972, p. 55 1.
The sociality of practice determines the sociality of cognition. Everyone forms his own understanding in social life and in contact with others. It is impossible to imagine individuals and personal understanding that exist out of society. On the surface, some scientific work can be done by a scientist alone, as if his research is purely a personal activity and has nothing to do with society. In fact, not only the materials he needs for his work and the basic scientific knowledge he has mastered are the products of society, but also the presentation of some problems that have become his research objects is restricted by social conditions. Dialectical materialism does not regard practice as an isolated activity of individuals, but as a social activity of people, first of all, the activities of people, especially working people. Working people are the main body of human beings' practice of transforming nature and society. Their struggle played a pioneering and decisive role in the occurrence and development of human knowledge, and their practical experience was the original source of all knowledge of nature and social knowledge. Although their experience is fragmented and unsystematic and needs to be integrated and refined to become systematic knowledge, all natural and social sciences cannot be separated from the production experience and social struggle experience accumulated by the people in long-term practice. Therefore, all natural sciences and social sciences are, in the final analysis, a summary of the people's experience in production struggle and social struggle. We are firmly opposed to treating the masses as "unconscious" and advocate treating the masses as the first gentleman who seeks knowledge. All cadres and researchers who do practical things should take a long-term view and be good at being students of the masses in order to be teachers of the masses.
Are there other sources of knowledge besides practice? No, practice is the only source of knowledge. Only by gaining rich experience in the practice of transforming the objective world can people carry out scientific abstract thinking and reach an understanding of objective laws. Comrade Mao Zedong said: "If you want to have knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of pears, you have to eat them yourself. If you want to know the organization and properties of atoms, you must carry out physical and chemical experiments to change the state of atoms. If you want to know the theory and method of revolution, you have to take part in it. All true knowledge comes from direct experience. " Of course, this is by no means to deny the importance of people learning indirect experience. Comrade Mao Zedong also said: "People can't experience everything directly. In fact, most knowledge is indirectly experienced. This is all knowledge of ancient and modern China and foreign countries. This knowledge was directly experienced by the ancients to outsiders. If the condition that Lenin said when the ancients directly experienced it is satisfied:' scientific abstraction' is a scientific reflection of objective things, then this knowledge is reliable, otherwise it is unreliable. Therefore, a person's knowledge is nothing more than direct experience and indirect experience. Besides, I experienced it indirectly, but I still experienced it directly. Therefore, as far as knowledge is concerned, no matter what kind of knowledge is inseparable from direct experience. "
(1) On Practice, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 1, People's Publishing House, 1966, p. 264.
It is important to accept the scientific knowledge in books. Each generation takes the end of the previous generation's understanding as the starting point of their own understanding, and then adds the new knowledge gained in practice to the treasure house of human knowledge and passes it on to the next generation through language and writing. If we want to get the direct experience of everything, in a word, if every generation wants to get the knowledge of fire from drilling for wood, it is impossible for human understanding to develop. However, book knowledge is only the "flow" of knowledge, not the "source". With regard to literature and art, Comrade Mao Zedong said: In people's lives, there used to be mineral deposits of literary and artistic raw materials. "They are the inexhaustible source of all literature and art ... this is the only source, because there can only be such a source, and there can be no second source." "In the past, literary and artistic works were not sources, but streams, which were created by the ancients and foreigners according to the literary and artistic raw materials they got in people's lives at that time and there. We must inherit all outstanding literary and artistic heritages and critically absorb all useful things. Comrade Mao Zedong's words are applicable to the whole field of knowledge. Marxism attaches great importance to the scientific knowledge in books, but opposes taking the knowledge in books as the source of knowledge, because then the relationship between theory and practice will be reversed, and the book knowledge will be treated in a dogmatic manner, and it will not be accepted correctly.
(1) On Practice, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol./kloc-0, People's Publishing House, pp. 1 956, pp. 265-264.
(2) The Speech at Yan 'an Forum on Literature and Art, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 2, published by People's Publishing House, page 8 17.
We should attach importance to learning from practice, and also take the method of combining theory with practice to study seriously. When talking about revolutionary cadres studying the laws of revolutionary war, Comrade Mao Zedong wrote: "Reading is learning, using is also learning, and learning is more important." With certain practical experience, it is possible to correctly, profoundly and critically accept the military knowledge in books, otherwise it is just an armchair strategist. We don't despise reading at all. On the contrary, we have always advocated reading more, but when reading, we oppose dogmatism and adhere to the principle of integrating theory with practice. Under the guidance of the method of combining theory with practice, the more you read, the more beneficial you are.
(1) "The Strategic Issues of China's Revolutionary War", in Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 1, People's Publishing House, pp. 1966, pp. 165.