Within the Communist Party of China, there was once a group of dogmatist comrades who persistently rejected the experience of the Chinese revolution, denying the truth that “Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action.” Instead, they mechanically parroted isolated phrases from Marxist texts to intimidate others. Another group of empiricist comrades long confined themselves to their own fragmented experiences, failing to grasp the importance of theory for revolutionary practice and losing sight of the broader revolutionary picture. Though they worked diligently, their efforts were blind. The erroneous thinking of these two groups, especially the dogmatism, inflicted immense damage on the Chinese Revolution from 1931 to 1934. Yet the dogmatists, cloaked in the mantle of Marxism, deceived the vast majority of comrades. Mao Zedong's “On Practice” was written to expose dogmatism and empiricism within the Party—especially the subjectivist errors of dogmatism—using the epistemological perspective of Marxism. Because the focus was on exposing dogmatism, a form of subjectivism that disregards practice, it was titled “On Practice.” Mao later delivered a lecture based on the ideas in this essay at the Yan'an Anti-Japanese Military and Political University.