It expresses Mao's support for Marxism and attempts to establish a distinctly Chinese brand of communist philosophy.
[2]: 38 At the time it was written, the Chinese Communist Party had just endured the Long March and their nationalist foes were still at large.
On Practice was written as a part of this mission, for it gave Mao a more legitimate claim to lead by creating the basis for his communist philosophy, Maoism.
[4]: 11–12 Thus, according to Mao, practical participation in social environments or production are the only reliable mechanism for developing useful knowledge.
[6]: 4–5 During the stage of perception individuals spend time interacting with the subject of their enquiry, and they merely absorb the impressions their senses are giving them.
This stage allows people to become familiar with the matter they are interested in, for as they gather impressions individuals begin to recognize the essential elements of their subject.
They can be as mundane as judging that many trees lose their leaves during the winter, and as significant as Mao's example, the Chinese Communist Party can defeat their Japanese opposition.
According to Mao, rationalists and empiricists do not follow the real path to knowledge, and he challenges these dissenters inability to recognize the proper use of practice.
Dialectical-materialism combines the perception empiricists hold dear with the cognition rationalists rely on, and as a result is the proper philosophy for attaining knowledge.
[2]: 38 Both works became widely read in the USSR after Mao was celebrated in the Eastern Bloc for China's intervention in the Korean War.
[2]: 39 On Practice laid the theoretical foundation for Mao's subsequent slogan, "seek truth from facts.
"[3]: 97 In April 1960, Petroleum Minister Yu Qiuli stated that On Practice (along with On Contradiction) would be the ideological core of the campaign to develop the Daqing oil field in northeast China.
[7]: 150 Yu's efforts to mobilize workers in Daqing focused on ideological motivation rather than material incentives.
[7]: 150 The successful completion of Daqing despite harsh weather conditions and supply limitations became a model held up by the Communist Party as an example during subsequent industrialization campaigns.