Social critic and academic Noam Chomsky has criticized the commission as undemocratic, pointing to its publication "The Crisis of Democracy", which describes the strong popular interest in politics during the 1970s as an "excess of democracy". He described it as one of the most interesting and insightful books showing the modern democratic system not to really be a democracy at all, but controlled by elites. Chomsky says that as it was an internal discussion, they "let their hair down" and talked about how the public needs to be reduced to its proper state of apathy and obedience.