The original point behind the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" was grounded in the ancient Roman meaning of "dictator": someone who for a specified period of time was allowed to rule without needing to conform to law. Immediately after a revolution there is a choice between "old law" -- i.e., the law of the bourgeois state with its protection of property -- or direct rule, not limited by law: hence dictatorship. It had _none_ of the implications that the word dictatorship assumed after the rise of the totalitarian states of the 20th century.
The Paris Commune was a dictatorship because it created its own rules as it went along, as a roman dictaror would have. It was a dictatorship of the proletariat because it was workers who were making those rules. Carrol
