Different anarchists have different positions but most nowadays (including myself) would argue that the commune did not go far enough. There are clear anarchist influences on the communes: the use of recallable delegates, the transformation of France into a federation of Free Communes, the formation of worker cooperatives and arming the people were all advocated by anarchists before Marx even became a socialist. This is quite different from the state centralization advocated previously by Marx in the Communist Manifesto & elsewhere. Lenin's claim that the Commune was a "proletarian state" is absurd since
most participants were what Lenin would consider "petty bourgeoise" (artisans).
Strickly speaking the Commune didn't really have a full-fledged state but did maintain a sort of semi-state within the commune while pushing for the abolition of the national state. They maintained a representative system and thus a hierarchical forms of control. I would prefer to see their representative council thing replaced with directly democratic mass assemblies. And, to the best of my knowledge, patriarchy continued to hold sway in Paris. I mostly agree with the article at http://www.struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/commune.html though there are a few small points I disagree wtih.
Bakunin on the Paris Commune: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bakunin/pariscommune.html
Kropotkin on the Commune: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/pcommune.html
WSM on the Commune: http://www.struggle.ws/talks/paris.html
"An Anarchist FAQ" Section on the Commune: http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/faq/sp001547/secA5.html#seca51
Lew Higgins wrote:
> Engels cited the Paris Commune of 1871 as an example of the
>dictatorship of
> the proletariat (non-hierarchical, the use of revocable delegates, >etc).
Lenin said the same thing, and claimed to be basing the state he created after October on the Commune. Also, while it was semi-anarchic, the Commune was not entirely non-hierarchical. Marx never cited the Commune as an example of "the dictatorship of the proletariat." Later he said that the Commune "was in no sense socialist, nor could it be" and "was merely the rising of a town under exceptional circumstances."
>>Most of his 20th followers took the term to mean the rule of their party.
>
> You mean followers of Lenin, since rule of the party is antithetical >to
> Marx's outlook.
The followers of Lenin consider themselves followers of Marx (interpreted through Lenin) and would differ with you.
> Marx did not favour workers' control of the state per se (and he did
>not use
> the Trotskyite oxymoron "workers' state").
So you think Marx was an anarchist?
-- Joe R. Golowka JoeG at ieee.org Anarchist FAQ -- http://www.anarchyfaq.org
"The basic problem is quite simple. An elected representative is not tied in any substantial way to particular policies, whatever the preferences of the electorate. Influence on the politician is greatest at the time of election. Once elected, the representative is released from popular control but continues to be exposed to powerful pressure groups, especially corporations, state bureaucracies and political party power brokers." - Brian Martin