VBA in the abstract never exists because it is bound to an applications environment.
VB exists as a stand-alone thing because it is bound to its own environment.
"Raw VBA" is merely a VBA snippet that has been taken out of context. If it appears in a book, the odds are that the VBA was extracted to clarify the content and allow you to focus on it for educational purposes. But there is no stand-alone VBA compiler - unless one has come out recently and I missed the announcement - which could happen, I'll admit. But I don't see VBA as a stand-alone thing because, among other things, there is no way in any of the VBA cases I have seen to make a MAIN program segment. VBA can only make functions and procedures that can be called from a given environment. Like an Access or Outlook event or an Excel or Word Macro. Power Point has it as well. Others? Not so sure because to be honest, I don't use much else than those five apps in my daily office work.