Marxists have long forecast the collapse of capitalism, and repeatedly been disappointed as the private enterprise system has restructured itself and continued to grow. The truth is that an economic system does not collapse of its own accord – someone has to dismantle it. Right now, British capitalism is doing a rather good job of precisely that.

The rationale for the capitalist system is that it is both more productive and fairer than any socialist alternative. It produces more and cheaper goods and allows anyone, irrespective of their background, to prosper if they have the initiative and determination so to do. It is a myth played out every year in programmes like the BBC's Apprentice.

But that's not what we've been seeing in the UK for the last 30 years. Inequality grew dramatically in the 1980s, thanks to the free-market reforms of Margaret Thatcher, and has remained largely unchanged ever since, as social mobility has stalled. Indeed, since the financial crash, the wealthy few have benefited from a humongous cash windfall thanks to the rise in property prices and the value of assets like shares. The wealth of the richest 1,000 British families has doubled since the crash.

Very little of this wealth has “trickled down” to the rest of society. UK wages have stagnated for more than a decade – the longest period of zero pay growth since the Napoleonic wars. This is largely because we've been living through an investment strike. British businesses have not been recycling their profits into new machinery and new products for the market. Productivity growth is running at its lowest levels for over a century.

A British worker, as a result, is about one-third less productive than a French or German worker. That's not because they work less hard, but because they are working with older machinery and using antiquated production methods. One trivial example of this is the hand car wash, which employs legions of low-paid workers in Britain. You never see these in France because car washes have long since been automated there.

Not surprisingly, British GDP per hour worked is now 17% below the G7 average. Britain vies with Italy at the bottom of the EU growth league at 1.2% per annum. Misguided policies of austerity after the financial crash are partly responsible. The government said we were living beyond our means. But by cutting public spending, and therefore demand after 2010, the Tory Chancellor, George Osborne, made the economy shrink faster. Countries like China did the reverse. It boosted investment in things like high-speed rail and renewable energy in which it now leads the world.

Bear this in mind tomorrow when you hear the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, announcing the “end of austerity” in his trick or treat Budget. Budgets are an exercise in creative accounting, designed to provide the illusion of prosperity and growth. We'll be told that we are on the brink of a new era of British economic success, a Brexit Bonus. Statistics will emerge, as if by magic, showing wages rising, inflation falling and unemployment at its lowest level since 1975. These are based on short-term indicators and belie the underlying stagnation.

The Chancellor will announce that the UK deficit has been dramatically cut to 1.1% – the lowest level since before the financial crash in 2008. Austerity, he'll say, has worked so well that public spending restraint is no longer needed. He will promise £20 billion extra for the National Health Service, a dramatic increase in pay for public sector workers, record house building, and around £2bn to ease the transition to Universal Credit. But this is an illusion. Austerity has not ended. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has repeatedly pointed out, we are only part way through a broad freeze on welfare benefits and local government spending. It’s locked in.

The budget boost is partly down to a statistical anomaly which has reduced public borrowing by £13bn, according to the Financial Times. It seems the Office for Budget Responsibility has been under-estimating the size of the UK economy, and consequently the size of the deficit. Businesses and workers have been generating more tax revenues than the OBR model predicted This has created unexpected wriggle room for the Chancellor at the very moment when he needs a way to disguise the greatest threat to British capitalism: Brexit.

This Halloween Budget is the last before Britain crashes out of the European Union after more than 45 years. The impact of Brexit has already been felt in Britain with the collapse of foreign direct investment. It dropped 90% in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 referendum, and while it has recovered since then, that's left a big hole in the economy.

There remains deep uncertainty about Britain's future at home and abroad. British manufacturing industry is already in recession and Britain’s trade deficit is getting worse. This despite a 15% fall in the value of the pound – something that would have been regarded as a sterling crisis in times past. The Bank of England estimates that Britain has already lost 2% of output thanks to the Brexit effect – that's around £300bn.

The Brexiteers, however, have achieved their goal. Britain is about to leave the European Union with either no deal or some form of basic free trade deal, of the kind Canada negotiated last year. They know that Brexit is going to hurt in the short term. The leading light of the European Research Group, Jacob Rees Mogg MP, forecast that the “overwhelming opportunity of Brexit is over the next 50 years”. But for them, the pain is worth it because they'll succeed in the ambition of turning the UK into a low-wage, low-regulation version of Singapore, capable of flooding the EU with cheap goods produced by sweatshop workers.

The truth is, Brexiteers are revolutionaries. But their project will come up against an insuperable obstacle: democracy. It is inconceivable that this revolutionary Brexit project, which will drive down living standards and the quality of life of the majority of the population, will be acceptable to British voters. Ironically, the Tory right may have opted to become the grave-diggers of British capitalism.

An entire generation of young people, burdened by student debts, sky-high rents and dismal job prospects, has already lost confidence in the system. They've built the Labour Party into the largest mass membership party in Europe, and installed neo-Marxist Jeremy Corbyn as its leader.

They are militantly opposed to Brexit, as we saw in the recent demonstration in London, the largest since the Iraq war, which was largely led by young people. They'll be joined by the tens of thousands of British workers in firms like BMW, Nissan and Airbus who find that, far from Brexit bringing jobs home, it has their firms off to relocate in the European Single Market.

This Budget will have the usual nips and tucks, but nothing can disguise the huge problems ahead. People have simply lost all confidence in the arrogant captains of industry, like Sir Philip Green, Sir Richard Branson or Sir Fred Goodwin. They may not realise it yet but UK capitalism is in deep trouble, and the Brexiteers plan to create a kind of Tory Venezuela-on-Sea is as daft as anything Hugo Chavez ever attempted.