In the political realm, a monopoly of power was held by one party, with most of the power concentrated at the top, and that party operated through the process Lenin called "democratic centralism." That was supposed to mean that open discussion could precede decision-making, which was then administered with unanimity and iron discipline. It usually meant, of course, that decisions were handed down from a dictator or a small circle of oligarchs, and were neither discussed nor questioned. In the economic realm, the state controlled the means of production, and a command economy, rather than a market economy, predominated. In the ideological realm, the declared aim of building communism -- for Marx, the classless, stateless final stage of human development -- was the state's "ultimate, legitimizing goal," and the state belonged to an international Communist movement aimed at moving the whole world toward that future society.