UN General Assembly
1979

212. The prejudice of the colonial scholars was, and continues to be, heavily influenced by the imperialist interests, while the misperception of the Marxist writers has been a logical extension of the assumption that "religion is the opium of the people", a contention that could have been true in one society or region but not necessarily in other societies and regions of the world. Instead of using Marxism as a tool of analysis, many Western and Eastern thinkers have substituted the Marxist doctrines for an independent study of third- world societies within their own native socio-historical context. It is unfortunate that too many of the contemporary liberal and socialist observers of the third world are still pursuing the framework developed by their nineteenth-century predecessors.