Although taking advantage of the power of politicians and the state is used to further the interest of capitalists in various occasions (the GP mentioned a few), why exactly is "crony capitalism" not capitalism? From a Marxian perspective, it fulfills all of the requirements for a capitalist mode of production.

And where do people "usually" call this "crony capitalism"? In fact, I tend to see this term only echoed around libertarian (the property kind, not the social kind) corners of the web.

It is also important to remember that natural monopolies can very easily form, and that the tyranny of property ownership isn't much better than the tyranny of the state granting various benefits to property owners. Proudhon in What is Property goes into this and Oscar Wilde talks about it in his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism.

Why is the crony vs 'not crony' distinction useful, and in what ways would a 'pure' capitalist society alleviate the problems caused by crony capitalism, including but not limited to the difficulty of acquiring sufficient capital to start a business or firm, dealing with anti-competitive behavior arising out of natural monopolies, the destitution and poverty caused by the extremely low cost of labour-power in certain parts of the world?

Please don't feel as though I'm attacking, I want to learn more about your ideas.

not capitalism as it defined in pure terms, or not capitalism in terms of how it always practically plays out? Can you point to a capitalist system that doesn't function like that? Can you lay out how buying regulation and manipulating market structures is not a core part of the incentives that a capitalist system lays out, and can you point out any practical ways in which you can protect capitalism from this particular pathology?

No true Scotsman in action. If all examples of capitalism eventually devolve into crony capitalism I think it's time to conclude it's part of the inherent nature of capitalism.

Crony capitalism is captitalism, but it is not free market capitalism

Eh, thats the original right there? May Scotts strike me down if it wasnt the same thing all along.

In order to understand what real capitalism is we'd have to understand where money came from, and even that is up for debate. Was it inefficient bartering of primitive people? (As it turns out, maybe not). Was it financiers of conquistadors? Possibly.