The rediscovery of Horkheimer's “Authoritarian State” coincided with, and partly informed, the theory and the hope of the ‘anti-authoritarian’ phase of the German SDS—a phase analogous to the student movement of the 1960s in the U.S. and elsewhere. That the text is just now available in English when this phase in the U.S. as well as in Germany is fast receding, if not long gone, inspires a second hope: what is past is not merely sloughed off, but retained and rethought. The very real danger is a political and social amnesia that spurs the recrudescense of forms of political activity and thought proved repressive long ago.