---
title: "Ch 22 — The Enemies We Actually Have"
description: "Part III chapter sorting the VSM's supposed adversaries by what each costs and finding that the one that costs most is not a person but a silence."
url: "https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/punch-and-judy/part-03-false-friends-and-enemies/ch22-the-enemies-we-actually-have"
modified: "2026-11-12T15:26:25.932Z"
language: "en"
site: "Cybernetic Futures"
---

# Ch 22 — The Enemies We Actually Have

[Chapter content](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/punch-and-judy/part-03-false-friends-and-enemies/ch22-the-enemies-we-actually-have/ch22-the-enemies-we-actually-have-content) · Overview diagram

# Ch 22 — The Enemies We Actually Have

**Part III — False friends and enemies.** The chapter argues that the tradition believes itself embattled when it is really unattended, and that the adversary which costs it most is not a person but a silence.

## The question
Count the people actually attacking the model: how many are there, and which of them costs the tradition anything?

## The finding
The chapter applies the standard set earlier in the book — an objection lands when it names something the model needs, cannot supply from its own resources, and has not been given by amendment — and says nothing here adds to the three objections that already landed. What remains it sorts by cost.

The rival ontology: Snowden, the most visible living critic in the market where most practitioners work, distinguishes Bateson-style cybernetics from its use for the VSM and holds that had Beer known complexity science he would have made something else. Taken seriously this is an ontological objection — much of organizational life is complex in Cynefin's sense, where cause and effect are only coherent in retrospect — but the chapter notes Cynefin's authors say its value lies in its effect on sense-making rather than in empirical verification. No test separates the two ontologies, an embarrassment the chapter says both sides share, and it costs the tradition commercially but not yet epistemically.

The sweeping dismissals: Hoos, Berlinski and Lilienfeld rejecting systems thinking wholesale in the 1970s. None is about this model; they predate most of what the tradition produced; their charge that the subject is untestable is one the book makes in more detail. They cost a reputation more than an argument, and in the respect they name the chapter concedes the reputation is deserved.

Friendly fire on the foundation: the Conant–Ashby theorem's standing is under attack from people who have never heard of Beer — Thobani in *Synthese* arguing the internal-model notion is too permissive, Virgo and colleagues in a preprint, Baez in a blog post. The chapter says this lands, where the tradition has no defense, and is the one piece of good news in the inventory: an interlocutor doing rigorous work on something we care about.

The silence is the serious one. Mainstream organization science does not reject the model; it barely engages Beer, and the VSM literature is concentrated in a handful of journals, so no gatekeeper's funding or accreditation depends on whether the model is right. The contrast is German systemic therapy, a constructivist community that acquired an evidence base when an institution controlling payment demanded one. The chapter marks its closing inference as its own: a register without an institutional stake behind it will stay empty, and the expensive item is arranging for somebody to require the experiments.

## What the chapter puts at risk
1. Secure from an indexed journal a submission rule requiring any VSM application article to state what result would have counted against the model.
2. Secure from a certifying body a requirement that the Aftermath/Learning component include one engagement that did not work.
3. Secure from one public-sector or foundation funder the same condition in its tenders.

## Beer locators
TBYT 2009: 150.

## Status
Draft, *Punch and Judy* v0.5.0 — **not project canon**, and not published. The chapter flags much of this material unverified: the dismissals are recorded from secondary sources; the formal critiques are described as peer-reviewed, preprint, blog and forum material with differing evidential weight; and it says the bibliometric review's journal-concentration and limited-diffusion findings, and the claim that mainstream organization science barely engages Beer, are not yet supported by a recorded citation search and must be replaced before print.

## Related
[Punch and Judy — Overview](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/punch-and-judy/overview), [Principles and axioms of organization](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/concepts/principles-and-axioms-of-organization), [Viable System Model](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/entities/viable-system-model), [Pathologies of viable systems](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/concepts/pathologies-of-viable-systems), [Stafford Beer](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/entities/stafford-beer), [Think Before You Think](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/entities/think-before-you-think), [Ch 17 — The Market Test](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/punch-and-judy/part-03-false-friends-and-enemies/ch17-the-market-test), [Ch 21 — The Category Error as Shelter](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/punch-and-judy/part-03-false-friends-and-enemies/ch21-the-category-error-as-shelter)