This material was prepared following a speech at the opening of the IV International Scientific and Practical Conference “The Socio-Economic Trajectory of Russia’s Development: The Categorical Imperative of Being in Time and Space”, held on November 28-29, 2024 at Tver State University, Tver. We were faced with the task of setting a certain framework for discussion at its Plenary meeting, stating a topic that internally implies some attempt to answer a fundamental question: what is the relationship between economic theory and practice, and, therefore, what is the nature of the connection between their potentials. The actualization of this problem is due to the fact that recently the theory has been increasingly accused of breaking with practice. At the same time, on the one hand, there is no necessary social order for deep socio-economic theories that explore the nature of systemic problems arising in economic practice. And, on the other hand, there is a tradition of a narrowly specialized, linear approach to their research: economic, managerial, legal, etc. For example, in economic theory, there are many approaches and schools, each of which offers its own ideas about how the economy functions. Thus, the classical school focuses on the free market and minimal government intervention, Keynesianism emphasizes the role of government regulation to stabilize the economy, and neoclassicism focuses on rationality and balance. But the “new reality” is complex, because it is associated with deep transformational processes. In these conditions, the problem of preserving and developing the methodology of political economy is extremely urgent and requires close attention of the economic community to understand the socio-economic nature of the ongoing transformations in order to increase the effectiveness of modern economic science for practice. This article presents an attempt to look at the indicated problem from the standpoint of the meanings of economic science, the ultimate goal (value) or the characteristics of its usefulness for practice, while maintaining a somewhat thesis statement of key provisions, justified, in our opinion, by the multidimensional nature of the proposed material.