  Fluctuations of the thermal or classical component of the van der Waals force
between two dielectric slabs, modelled as an ensemble of polarizable dipoles
which interact via the usual electrostatic dipole-dipole interaction, are
evaluated. In the model the instantaneous force is a deterministic function of
the dipole configurations in the slabs and its fluctuations are purely due to
dipole fluctuations (no background thermal fluctuations of the electromagnetic
field are considered). The average of the force and its variance are computed.
The fluctuations of the force exhibit normal thermodynamic scaling in that they
are proportional to the area of the two plates, and even more importantly, do
not depend on any microscopic cut-off in the theory. The average and the
variance of the thermal van der Waals forces give a unique fingerprint of these
fluctuation interactions.
