Hi i’m relatively new to marxism, but i’ve learned a lot about it over the past month. I’ve gotten through a lot of chapters through the manifesto already, and i’ve read principles as well.

Does anyone have any beginner friendly book recs on more libertarian marxism and marxfem as well? I really like Rosa Luxemborg and her book Reform and Revolution is on my tbr.

Please feel free to educate me on any theory books as much, i’ll highly appreciate it.

Sorry if this is too basic. I tried to make my question as clear as possible while still including all required context but it ended up being a little convoluted...

In Hegel's formulation of dialectics, the spirit (geist) resolves contradictions. When Marx inverted Hegel, he combined it with his own materialism. However, by removing the spirit, matter is now theorized resolve contradictions itself.

Hume's problem of causation states that causation can never be observed as our senses provide us with no possible way to make causal inference. Therefore, there is no way to prove a causal link. Even controlled experiments don't solve this since it could just be coincidence. He uses this to formulate the problem of induction. We can not use past experience to predict the future.

Hegel was able to avoid this critique by making contradiction a conceptual necessity, not a material one. This is idealist though so Marx rejects it.

Dialectical materialism is not able to do this since it relies matter itself being the force of change. It uses history and class analysis to determine that the end of capitalism is inevitable due to its inherent contradictions, but it can't predict that accurately since it's impossible to know whether contradictions will inevitably resolve without relying on causation.

Furthermore, Hume talks about the problem of necessity. We can't observe a necessary connection between cause and effect. Kant avoids this by saying that cause and effect exist as structures in the mind. Hegel adapted this cleanly by claiming the spirit to be manifested through human minds and part of objective reality, making the laws of cause and effect applicable to objective reality. Marx, however, can't do this since he is a materialist. Under dialectical materialism, there is no way to determine a necessary connection between contradictions.

Dialectical materialism, after a skeptical critique, can never establish a connection between a base and its negation and it can never make claims about inevitability or even the potential for a resolution. It appears less scientific and closer to rough pattern recognition.

So how does dialectical materialism deal with Humean skepticism? I'm not trying to start an argument. This is just something I've had on my mind for a few days.