Building a recursive smart contract -- is it possible?

What you're looking for is the factory contract storage pattern, and not a "recursive" smart contract. Recursion doesn't quite make sense here.

The idea is that you have a contract that can deploy contracts. Below is an example of a CampaignFactory contract that deploys Campaign contracts. What you'd want to do then is add a linked list feature to each new campaign.

You could add the Multi-level marketing aspect by allowing each additional Campaign to also have the functionality of the CampaignFactory, as well as have a variable like address creator that points back to the original creator.

It would then be pretty easy to send the MLM money 'up' the chain.

contract CampaignFactory {

    Campaign[] campaigns;
    address creator;
    mapping(address => Campaign[]) campaignsByOwner;

    function createCampaign(uint min_contrib) public {
        Campaign newCampaign = new Campaign(min_contrib, msg.sender);
        campaignsByOwner[msg.sender].push(newCampaign);
        campaigns.push(newCampaign);
    }

    function getAllCampaigns() public view returns (Campaign[] memory) {
        return campaigns;
    }

    function getCampaignByAddress(address creator) public view returns (Campaign[] memory) {
        return campaignsByOwner[creator];
    }
}