Everyone at Davos this year really wants you to know that the corporate world is cleaning up its act. Yes, O.K., maybe they’ve said things like that before, but this year they mean it. Walking around, I thought at times that I had mistakenly wandered into a business-casual Bernie Sanders rally: unrestrained capitalism has gone too far; corporate greed has endangered the planet; the time has come for radical change. On the train into Davos, a representative of Philip Morris told me that the company was “dedicated to a smoke-free future.” I blinked; she said the company had “a duty” to millions of addicted smokers.

Woke capitalism, in short, was the dominant motif at Davos 2020. Its visual symbol was a group of teenage girls and boys who were invited to Davos as “change-makers,” a gang of Greta Thunbergs-in-training. They provided a visual contrast to the great masses of aging men in bluish suit jackets, and they were a particular delight to photographers, who stalked them like rare animals, which in a way, they are. “The forum used to be made up of a lot of old, rich white men,” explained Naomi Wadler, a 13-year-old anti-gun activist, who perhaps was unaware that it still is. Though, to be fair, a record 24 percent of the participants this year were women.

At an anti-capitalist capitalist event, revolutionary sentiments can erupt in unexpected places. Will. I. Am, the musician, interrupted a fancy private concert co-hosted by a billionaire, Marc Benioff, to explain that he has come to see “talentism” — in which human ability is the dominant resource — as the replacement for capitalism. Mr. Benioff himself declared the next day that “capitalism as we’ve known it is dead,” and called for higher taxes on the wealthy. The range was broad: At an event titled “2030,” Lucian Tarnowski and his cohort predicted a new golden age of human thriving following various radical changes, such as the overcoming of material wants and broader use of psychedelics for emotional health. And in an official nod to the revolutionary spirit, the World Economic Forum itself, which runs the show, released a new “Davos Manifesto,” for the “fourth industrial revolution.”

That Davos Manifesto is, I hasten to say, good stuff (as is the forum’s new “ESG” metric, designed to complement profit as a measure of corporate success). Companies, the manifesto says, must pay their fair share of taxes; treat suppliers and workers well; accept fair competition; and have “zero tolerance for corruption.”