p Practice is the active work of people in transforming nature and society. The basis of practice is labour, material production. Practice also includes the political side of life, the class struggle, the national liberation movement and scientific experience, experiments. Practice is social in character. It is, above all, the activity of large groups of people, of all working people, the producers of material wealth, and not of isolated individuals.

p In the course of practice man not only transforms objects existing in nature, but also creates objects which are not available in ready-made form in nature. Man produces many artificial materials which at times surpass anything known to nature in durability and other important properties.

p Practice is the starting point and basis of knowledge. Why? First of all because knowledge itself arose on the basis of practice, chiefly under the influence of material production. From the very first steps of his existence man had to work, to win his means of livelihood. In the process of work he came up against the forces of nature and by transforming them and making them serve his needs he gradually came to understand them. The further development of production demanded new knowledge. Even in antiquity man was faced with the need to measure land areas, to count the number of tools and the products he made. As a result, the first rudiments of mathematics appeared. Man built dwellings, bridges, roads, irrigation 154 systems and other structures which called for the knowledge of mechanics. Thus, under the influence of practical requirements his cognitive abilities gradually developed and gave birth to science. Practice was also behind the birth of the social sciences. Marxism itself, as we know, arose on the foundation of the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle.

p Practice sets knowledge definite tasks and facilitates their accomplishment, thus advancing knowledge. The experience of socialist production in the Soviet Union, it was noted at the 25th CPSU Congress, shows that it is necessary to conduct research in the first place in areas which have a direct bearing on the all-round development of production and its management, and to draw up recommendations aimed at substantially raising the effectivity of production. This is the main task of Soviet economists.

p Finally, practice provides instruments and equipment for scientific cognition and thereby facilitates the progress of knowledge. Without superpowerful particle accelerators and other very intricate scientific instruments and installations produced by modern industry scientists would not have been able to discover the secrets of the atomic nucleus. We cannot imagine science today without electronic microscopes, space rockets and many other simple and complex instruments of knowledge. All these instruments are in fact the product of the material, practical activities of people.

Practice is not only the basis, but also the aim of knowledge. Man studies the surrounding world and learns the laws of its development in order to utilise the results of knowledge in his practical activities. It is true that these results are not always applied at once. The disintegration of the atom, for example, was discovered over 80 years ago, but it was only recently that man learned how to use atomic energy for practical purposes. And although often decades pass before scientific discoveries are applied, they are all determined, brought into being by the requirements of life.