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It has become commonplace to portray the period since the crisis of Fordism as new times, characterized by the emergence of new political forms, new social movements, new systems of production and the like. Already, some have argued, these new structures are beginning to coalesce around a flexible or post-Fordist regime of accumulation. We want to suggest in this chapter that such claims are premature, based as they are on a fundamental misreading of the contemporary situation. This, we argue, is more accurately portrayed as hard times: the crisis of Fordism remains, as yet, unresolved. This is because a demonstrably reproducible replacement has yet to stabilize. Certainly, there is no shortage of intriguing local experiments-such as the widely documented examples from the Third Italy and Baden-Wiirttembergsome of which may indeed be lighting the way beyond the protracted Fordist crisis. But local …