These two sentences are the start of a contradictory four paragraphs. Here's more of the quote:

And the poorer half of the population are as poor today as they were in the past, with barely 5 percent of total wealth in 2010 , just as in 1910. Basically, all the middle class managed to get its hands on was a few crumbs: scarecely more than a third of Europe's wealth and barely a quarter of the United States. This middle group has four times as many members as the top decile yet only one-half to one-third as much wealth. It is tempting to conclude that nothing has really changed: inequalities in the ownership of capital are still extreme (see Table 7.2).

None of this is false, and it is essential to be aware of these things: the historical reduction of inequalities of wealth is less substantial than many people believe. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the limited compression of inequality that we have seen is irreversible. Nevertheless, the crumbs that the middle class has collected are important, and it would be wrong to underestimate the historical significance of the change. A person who has a fortune from 200,000 to 300,000 euros may not be rich but is a long way from being destitute, and most of these people do not like to be treated as poor. Tens of millions of individuals - 40 percent of the population represents a large group, intermediate between rich and poor - individually own property worth hundreds of thousands of euros and collectively lay claim to one-quarter to one-third of national wealth: this is a change of some moment. In historical terms, it was a major transformation, which deeply altered the social landscape and the political structure of society and helped to redefine the terms of distributive conflict. It is therefore essential to understand why it occurred.

Piketty's argument in Capital was not that "it's all pointless, fuckin' waaaah" it's that wealth naturally accumulates unless checked by policy.

Why 1910? He could have picked 1960 or 1800, I suppose, but the year 1910 seemed to float in the back of the mind like a silent paradox.

Because that's when the data started getting good and repeatable and comparable to modern data. Dude blows like a chapter explaining this. Say what you will about Piketty, but the dude shows his work.

The rest of it has fuckall to do with Piketty, but is instead an archetypal Commentary Magazine paean to how things were better when the HUAC was running America.